I haven't been doing any blogs for many, many moons (I hope you noticed) because I've been busily ensconced in writing my next book. When you're spewing out tens of thousands of words, there is very little space for more words. At the end of each day my fingertips were worn to shreds, my mind dried up like an old husk, so I had nothing to write.
After writing my last book, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled (which I hope you bought and if not why?) I said, "Never again will I go through something that labour intensive. Remove my uterus, this is too much." It's like giving birth, you're in so much pain you want to chew your arm off but in the end, if the baby thrives (and in my case, my book gets to number one on the bestseller list - thank you all) you go ahead, get fertilised again and start again.
The book (my newest baby) comes out in January 2018. It will be called How To Be Human: The Manual. It's written by a monk, a neuroscientist and me. The monk, Thubten, tells us how our mind works and a very good looking neuroscientist, called Ash, tells us how our brain works and says that the reason we should be talking about neuroscience is because understanding how the brain works can help us to make better decisions about how we live our lives. The monk says that when we can recognize that our thoughts and emotions are things that our body generates, not intentional decisions made by us, we don't feel so helpless or self-critical.
Meanwhile, I talk about where we are today as a human race. Are we everything evolution dreamed we'd be? Not that we can do anything about it ‒ it's just nice to know where we might have tripped up or not. If there's life on other planets, they may learn from us what not to do.
It took us four billion years to evolve to where we are now ‒ completely brilliant and yet, some might say, emotionally dwarfed. The question is could our more empathetic side catch up in time to save us and the world? I've got nothing against smarts, but it's smarts without emotional awareness that got us into the position of being able to nuke each other into oblivion and rape the earth for oil. We need to upgrade our minds as much as we've upgraded our phones.
In the book, I cover evolution, thoughts versus emotions, addiction, relationships, kids, sex, compassion and forgiveness.
You can't stop the future from arriving, no matter what drugs you're on. But even if nearly every part of us becomes robotic, we'll still (fingers crossed) have our minds, which - hopefully - we'll be able to consciously use to help us become more human and less machine.
I hope you like my next book - I dilated for it to the max and pushed like a mother fu....er but I think it was worth it.
Ruby is on tour in the UK and Ireland this autumn 2017 with her #Frazzled Show. Tickets are still available - book quick.
If you want to be the first to know more about Ruby's research into mental health when her new book is published, as well as exclusive news, special offers and other things that might be useful to you, just tell Ruby where to get in touch.
Want to learn more about mindfulness, and being conscious of your feelings? You can buy Ruby's no. 1 best selling book A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled online and from all good bookshops.