Monday Muse: Seven Inspirations for the Week

Stealing Books, A Healthy Plan, A Poor Fly and Love in Retrospect

1/ The book I’ve been reading this week:

I first saw this book at my friend’s house. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. The bright yellow cover caught my eye and she said it was excellent. I planned on ordering it from Amazon, but that was last year and I forgot.

My daughter and I were travelling back from Florida last month and she picked it up at the airport bookshop at Gatwick. I had a ten pound note to spend that I’d found at the bottom of my bag so we were looking for a book that we both wanted to read and she’d heard it was good.

I let her take it to read first as I was already halfway through another book, but once she passed it on to me, it was one of those books that you just have to keep reading.

It’s about an author (any book about books gets my attention fast!) whose first novel is rather a flop and she’s friends with a very successful writer. She’s rather jealous of this other woman but also likes to bask in her glory and luxury lifestyle. One day they are celebrating and drinking and the writer chokes on a pancake and dies right in front of her.

Before calling the paramedics she stashes the successful writer’s new and unpublished manuscript into her bag. She spends the next few months finishing the stolen book and rewriting much of it.

What intrigued me was the way you are drawn into feeling sorry for the main character who ends up passing off the wildly successful book as her own. She now has the lifestyle of her dead friend and does some pretty terrible things to keep people from finding out.

I found myself reasoning on what she was doing and thinking it was ok, and then the next minute realising what I was thinking! I was reasoning that it was understandable that she should have the success she was having as she’d rewritten a lot of the manuscript, then thinking no no no that’s just wrong. Very clever writing and a satisfying ending!

2/ What I’m grateful for this week:

Have you ever noticed that it’s only in retrospect that we sometimes appreciate what we have now?

And also that when we have been through a major life upheaval, it’s only on looking back that we can see our own strength. Those days when we barely held on and just made it through, so we could collapse into bed at the end of the day.

I’m so very grateful that firstly, my life isn’t like that anymore. I love my days. I feel fulfilled by the people in it and by what I do and the path I have chosen, because I have chosen this path, all by myself.

For the first time, my life isn’t dictated by others. I’ve finally found out who I am and what I want, and the peace that comes with that is absolutely priceless.

Which brings me to the second reason that I’m feeling grateful about this week, and that’s the peace I have in my life.

It’s a peace on all levels, every aspect of my days. I live in a peaceful place. I’m at peace with my neighbours and the people I spend time with. I’m at peace with the family that I have.

But most of all I’m making peace with the past, with the fact that my life looks vastly different to how I imagined it would. I’m at peace and have accepted that some people in my life aren’t meant to be with me forever, that maybe we both have different paths to take and that going our separate ways was maybe the right thing for us both, that we have different purposes in life now.

3/ My favourite quote this week:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

4/ My healthy tip of the week:

I sometimes find that at certain times of the year if I’m not careful my healthy eating plan goes out the window. One of those times is now. Where I live there is a lot of socialising that goes on in the summer months. Friends have parties and BBQs, villages have fetes, sitting outside village bars for drinks and outdoor restaurant dining.

With all this going on, it’s easy for me to be out almost every night and even if I don’t drink or have just one glass of wine, the food isn’t as healthy and balanced as I’d make at home. After a few weeks or months of this if I didn’t step back every now and then to reassess I’d be completely out of my routine and wondering how to get back to where I was.

Sometimes when that happens you need a little help and guidance, a structured plan to get you in a healthy routine without too much stress and with gradual change.

This is where I shamelessly plug a new course I have created called Nourish and Flourish: A 4-Week Wellness Journey! Basically in a month, it will enable you to form new healthy habits and to easily change to a healthier way of life without too much effort, just determination and the desire to live a healthier life.

Like everything I write about and share here and on my website, it all comes from my own experiences and what works and has worked for me.

5/ This is what I’ve been studying this week:

Another of the six mental faculties. This week is reason. Here’s the question that was posed - Do you think that you could do a whole lot better if you tried just a little bit harder?

It’s the way we think. Harder work gets us further. It’s not true!

I’m not saying that we sit back and just wait for things to fall into our laps. But what I’ve found is trying harder is not the way to get more in life.

There’s a story about a fly. This poor fly was desperately trying to get out of a closed window, buzzing away, flinging itself against the glass, thinking that if it just keeps trying harder it will escape. Just a few feet away from the fly is an open door. If the fly just changed his strategy he could easily escape. Not try harder as that’s getting him nowhere and he will die trying. All he needs to do is stop, take a step back and try a different approach.

Do you see where I’m going with this?!

In the two years before my marriage ended, I tried every way I could think of to make things better. I tried harder and harder, looking for ways to change things. It wasn’t getting me any closer to what I so desperately wanted which was peace and happiness.

One day it came to me that I had to start thinking in a completely different way, outside the box I had been in. I had to think in a new direction and not in the fixed way of doing things that I kept trying so hard at.

I had to take a drastically different approach. I left. I was using my reason in the wrong way by thinking that all I needed to do was try harder and come up with new ways for my husband to love me.

In leaving I could see clearly what I wasn’t allowing myself to see. That our story together was over and there was nothing I could do to change that. But what I could do was reach the place of peace and happiness that I so desperately sought.

Whether it’s a relationship, our work or our health, it doesn’t matter. The formula is:

• Stop

• Step back

• Don’t try harder

• Think in a new direction

I realised that whatever I need the universe has it there waiting for me to see it and be guided towards it.

6/ This is what I’ve been listening to on repeat:

I think pretty much everyone must have heard this song at some point in their life and even know the words to sing along. What I realised this week when the lyrics just popped into my mind after reading a note by a fellow Substacker regarding her marriage ending, was that I was able to look at love from both sides now.

Joni Mitchell talks about “up and down” (clouds), “give and take” (love), and “win and lose” (life). The more experiences we have in life the more we are able to see it from both sides. To see things from a perspective other than our own and to have a broader and more open mind. To let things go and to live and let live.

In Thailand, there is a wonderful phrase the Thai people use, Sabai Sabai. It means to be relaxed, chilled, at ease and to just go with the flow. I think it’s a wonderful way to live.

7/ My favourite meditation this week:

This meditation was originally provided to my paying members only, but for the next week, it is available to all. I have come to realise that this is such a vital part of our healing. We need to forgive ourselves before we can forgive others. Do you agree?!

Remember, self-forgiveness is not a one-time event but a continual practice of kindness and understanding towards yourself. Let this meditation be a step towards your journey of self-love and inner peace.

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Did you enjoy this week’s Monday Muse?! I hope so and that you’ve found it inspiring and helpful.

I love sharing what has helped me, so please let me know in the comments whether it has helped you too and which of the 7 you liked most.

See you next week.

Love Georgia xx

P.S. Don’t miss Chapter 5 of my book The Synergy Game on Thursday!

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