Daily Motivator - August
 

August 1

Confronting fear

There are times when you must run from what frightens you. It’s a natural reaction and one that protects you from harm.

But it can also be important to approach, investigate, and seek to become familiar with what you’re afraid of. For your fears point toward opportunities for strengthening your courage.

By confronting a particular fear you experience your own ability to do so. That can help you to avoid or escape the grip of other fears.

Life certainly has its dangers, and you’re wise to maintain a level of fear toward them. Yet sometimes you must act in the face of fear, and it’s good to give yourself experience at doing that.

Small children understand this, and often become highly curious about life’s frightening aspects. That’s not a desire to hide from fear, but an attempt at learning how to navigate a perilous world.

Such skills are valuable to know, to practice, and to strengthen. Identify fears that you can reasonably confront, and grow your courage by doing so.

— Ralph Marston

Happy August my dear friends,
I hope and prayed that you had an awesome
July. Let's thank God for getting us though
The Month of July safe and sound.
God bless you as we prepare our
Journey through the month of August
one day at a time. Much love to
and your familys.

August 2

Challenge your thoughts

Your first thoughts about a particular situation are likely not your best thoughts on it. When you can, give those thoughts time to be challenged and improved by other thoughts.

Distance yourself from the circumstances and mindset you were in when you first had the thoughts. Alter your perspective and enable your thoughts to run in a different direction.

It’s great to jump quickly into action when you think of what must be done. But it can also be wise not to jump too quickly.

That’s especially true when you’re operating in unfamiliar territory. If you have a brilliant idea for what to do, and you’ve never done it before, seriously scrutinize that idea, and run it by others if you can.

An important part of being creative and resourceful is having the humility to recognize your initial plans could be way off base. It’s entirely appropriate to have confidence that you can get it right while also acknowledging that’s not likely to happen instantly.

Think innovative, creative thoughts, then expand your creativity by questioning those thoughts. Do what it takes to get yourself from the first idea all the way to the best idea.

— Ralph Marston

August 3

Easy is not worth it

Easy is overrated. The best option is not usually the easiest option.

It’s easy to complain but much better to solve the problem you’re complaining about. It’s easy to wish for the outcome you desire but better to take action and make it happen.

Doing only what’s easy won’t improve your skills or leave you with any lasting sense of accomplishment. The easy path is not the most interesting or fulfilling one.

The most meaningful times are not the easiest times. Much of what makes life good comes to the forefront when life is difficult.

Easy is a promise that rarely lives up to expectations. What’s easy in the moment often leads to regret over time.

Be wary of giving up time, opportunity, meaning and value in exchange for ease. Usually, easy is not worth the cost, and you have a lot of better options.

— Ralph Marston

Easy Does But, Do It.

August 4

What you complain about

You draw into your life what you focus on. One powerful, negative way to direct your focus is by complaining.

As a result, the people and circumstances that exert influence over your life can be the ones you complain most loudly about. Your complaints have the effect of perpetuating themselves.

Your focus, in and of itself, does not cause things to happen in the external world. However, your focus does have a significant impact on the way you perceive and react to what happens in your world.

So by complaining about something, you expand its presence in your life. Fortunately, you have much better alternatives for directing your focus.

You can focus less on what you despise and more on what you love. You can focus on solutions to problems rather than on who is to blame and the harm they cause.

Let your thoughts be occupied by positive possibilities, not by repeated complaints. Instead of complaining, you can always choose to focus on thoughts that lead your life in satisfying and beneficial directions.

— Ralph Marston

August 5

The strength of patience

Patience is an excellent way of getting time to work in your favor. One moment of patience can prevent years of problems and conflicts.

Patience does not mean an absence of action. Patience is taking action at a pace that permits deliberation and thoughtfulness.

Patience helps you avoid mistakes. It shields you from needless anxiety and frustration.

With patience you’re able to develop rich and fruitful levels of understanding. Patience brings you closer to people, places, and things that are initially distant.

Are you seeking to resolve a difficult problem, or to reach an ambitious goal? Consider the powerful role that patience can play in doing so.

Those who are truly strong often reveal and exercise their strength with patience. Those who are patient grow even stronger.

— Ralph Marston

August 6

Your potential

There was a time when you had great potential. You still do.

Much of your potential has gone unrealized. Of course it has, but that’s okay.

Just because you cannot do everything is no reason to avoid doing something. Just because you have not fully lived up to your potential is no reason to turn your back on it.

Your potential is eager to forgive you for any time you’ve spent ignoring it, whether that has been weeks or decades. Even more so, your potential is eager for you to put it to use.

There are many things in this life you’ve always cared about. You have plenty of possible ways, right now, to put that care, that love, that fascination, curiosity and ambition into action.

You have great potential, and there’s a great reason for it. By fulfilling your highest potential you make life good, for yourself, for everyone.

— Ralph Marston

August 7

Make beauty

Make beauty, make excellence. Create sincere expressions of truth.

Carry yourself forward with honor, with dignity, with a reverence for all the goodness that is possible. Live up to the potential of the moment, every moment.

Act as though you understand and appreciate how good you have it. Be the embodiment of life that life so earnestly seeks to know.

Have the courage to live the adventure that begins right where you are. Let the past continue to guide you in experiencing a future that never ceases to excite you.

Love in such an authentic way that no love is ever lost. Forge connections with reality that transcend all time and space.

Remember all you have always known you can be. Now is when.

— Ralph Marston

August 8

Balance that stays in balance

Effective balance is not a matter of countering one extreme with an opposite extreme. You cannot eat everything in sight one day and then nothing the next day and expect to achieve nutritional balance.

To address any imbalance, seek to rein in that specific imbalance. Adding a similar amount of imbalance in another direction just gets you more out of balance.

When you suffer because of an imbalance in your life, taking drastic measures might seem an appealing way to fix it quickly. But a situation that took a long time to build will take time to fix, and calls for an approach you can sustain over the long haul.

It’s useful to know and understand the extremes, and to occasionally experience them. Yet you’ll wear yourself out if you spend all your time negotiating between them.

Balance must be maintained for it to have value. Move toward the sort of balance that facilitates momentum.

Use your time and energy to move forward rather than swinging back and forth between extremes. Enjoy the benefits of a balance that stays in balance.

— Ralph Marston

August 9

Go where purpose leads

Zero in on a purpose for today. Enumerate the ways you intend to make a difference.

Bring the adventure to life. Feel exhilaration as you live out the mission you have assigned yourself.

Then decide on what you’ll do to extend the experience tomorrow. Keep on living with purpose, producing benefits for your world and yourself.

Give in fully to those aspects of life you care most about. Let meaningful purpose get you going and keep you going.

As the minutes fly by, seize upon their fleeting opportunities and transform them into enduring value. Make time your friend by making it your workplace.

Purpose takes you to good fulfilling places. Make the choice to go where it leads.

— Ralph Marston

August 10

What you’re able to do

Many factors in your life are beyond your control, and will always be. But that doesn’t mean you’re helpless.

You cannot control the weather or the progression of the seasons. Yet you can control your own actions to prepare and equip yourself for the weather you’re likely to encounter.

You cannot rid the world of all the viruses and bacterial pathogens that cause serious disease. What you can do is practice good hygiene and make the healthy choices that enable your miraculous immune system to fight off those germs.

The thoughts, opinions, words, and actions of other people are not under your control. However, by carefully controlling your own behavior, you can shield yourself from most of the damaging behaviors of others.

It is futile to seek control over many of life’s most pervasive influences. Instead, put your thoughts, your time, your energy into making and carrying out the most effective choices within what you do control.

Although some options will always be beyond your reach, many good ones are still available to you. Live so that what you’re able to do more than makes up for what you’re unable to do.

— Ralph Marston

August 11

All the good you do

Your ego will never be satisfied. Whenever you manage to obtain what it desires, it reacts by wanting more.

That’s an empty, frustrating road you don’t have to go down. At any point you can choose another path.

There’s no need for constantly seeking ways to exhibit how great you are. It’s tiring for you and tiresome to others.

Instead, set about to discover how genuinely good, useful, kind, and encouraging you can be. Seek authentic experiences, connections, relationships that uphold truth at their center.

Ego tempts you with promises of thrills and adulations that it never fully delivers upon. Yet you can resist that temptation with a life of goodness and sustainable quality.

To truly experience satisfaction, stop endlessly chasing it. Instead, allow lasting satisfaction and fulfillment to flow from all the good, kind, and helpful things you do.

— Ralph Marston

August 12
Exercise your effectiveness

Just because you’ve failed once or twice does not mean you’ll always fail. Just because a particular action brought no positive results does not mean all further action is futile.

There’s much you have learned from your past experiences. But those experiences have not taught you everything there is to know.

You are not helpless, and your situation is not hopeless. There exist right now some specific actions with which you can bring about a positive, transformative result.

Those actions are not immediately obvious, and they won’t be easy. Nonetheless, they are possible for you and available to you.

Commit yourself to determining what you can do, and to following through with it. Expect to find a workable way forward, then be the force that fulfills that expectation.

Seize upon the opportunity to exercise your effectiveness, to make a meaningful difference. Use your power, your faith, your persistence, and bring new goodness to life.

— Ralph Marston

August 13

The value of hope

Hope alone will not bring what you hope for. But that doesn’t mean it lacks value.

Hope focuses your attention on the positive possibilities. And where your attention is focused is where your energy is directed.

Hope infects your expectations, points them toward a positive outcome. Those expectations drive your perceptions, your behavior, and affect your results.

Hope for the best but don’t stop there. Hope for the best, then let hope push you into action and sustain that action for as long as necessary.

Have so much hope that you get up and do something useful and effective with it, again and again. Do the work that hope demands rather than expecting hope to do all the work.

Hope has great value, but it’s not an easy way out. At its best, hope points you in the most challenging and fulfilling way forward, and that’s a very good way to be headed.

— Ralph Marston

August 14

Ability to achieve

Make your goal simple. Make it specific and unambiguous.

Then set about to get it done. Keep going until you have achieved what you intend to achieve.

You have it in you to make that happen. Over the course of your life, you’ve done it again and again.

Now, get back to the basics that have been proven by your experience. Specify your intention with absolute clarity and then persist with your focus on that intention until it is done.

What would be of value, what would improve the lives of those around you, what would make a positive difference? Imagine it, define it, and do it.

You have more power than the doubts, the distractions, the complacency and the obstructions. You have within you the ability to achieve, and now you can make it happen.

— Ralph Marston

August 15

Take a break

With extended focus you create powerful results. But you can’t maintain focus indefinitely.

At some point your focus will begin to lose its effectiveness. That’s when an interruption, whether you choose it or not, is not such a bad thing.

Go ahead and take a break. Give yourself and your thoughts a valuable change of perspective.

Don’t see it as a failure or as an excuse to permanently abandon the work you’ve been doing. Don’t feel guilty or angry or annoyed about it.

Just remind yourself it’s a temporary break. Allow yourself to enjoy the refreshing change.

Then, with renewed energy you can get back to what you were doing. And your focus will be more effective, more creative than ever.

— Ralph Marston

August 16

Full goodness of right now

No matter the situation, you can always come up with a reason to be unhappy, or worried, anxious, fearful. And because those negative emotions are always available, always possible, you never have to hold on to them.

You become uptight because you anticipate certain difficulties or discomforts that are likely to arise in the near future. Yet the reality of right now is just fine, and you have the opportunity to experience a peaceful and productive moment.

Imagine letting go of all anxieties about the future and all resentments about the past. Consider how liberating that is.

Your time is right now. Give to this time, and to yourself, the benefit of your full awareness, uncorrupted by worries, fears, or angers.

You are wise to be concerned about potential troubles that loom just over the horizon. And yet in this moment that’s now yours, you have the opportunity to strengthen and fortify yourself.

Allow the full goodness of right now, unperturbed by what has been, by what might be. Now, feel your strength, your purpose, your resilience, your ability, and carry it all forward to successfully meet whatever may come.

— Ralph Marston

August 17

Action and enjoyment

Enjoyment is optional. Action is not.

You can get the work done, and benefit from it, without enjoying it. But you cannot enjoy the work, nor can you benefit from it, without actually doing it.

It’s great when you can enjoy what you’re doing, but it’s not an absolute necessity. If you have to choose between action and enjoyment, choose action.

Enjoyment can be a big help in getting things done, yet enjoyment alone is not sufficient. By all means let yourself enjoy your work as you can, but don’t make enjoyment your top priority.

Get in the habit of taking action even when it’s not enjoyable. Eventually your work will create much more enjoyment than any you might have missed along the way.

Make action your top priority and enjoyment a desirable bonus when it comes. That’s what will maximize both the level of achievement and the level of enjoyment in your life.

— Ralph Marston

August 18

Ideal day

It would be nice to live your ideal day, but that’s probably not the one you have right now. What you have is the day that’s here.

And although today may fall short of perfection, it’s a perfectly good opportunity to add value, meaning and substance to life. It’s a day you can fill with the best you have.

Merely wishing for a different set of circumstances won’t accomplish anything at this point. Instead, use your energy to step forward and work with this day as it is.

The way today ends has the potential to be a whole lot better than the way it began. Right now you’re in position to make that happen.

Reflect for a moment on how today would be if it were indeed your ideal day. Then choose one aspect of that vision and do what’s necessary to bring it to life.

Today is not ideal, and yet that’s precisely the point of living it. Because you have the chance, and the ability, to push this day in an ideal direction.

— Ralph Marston

August 19

World of truth

There is a world where plenty of people appreciate the good work you and others do. There is a world where excellence and responsibility are valued over greed and indolence.

There is a world where beauty is admired, achievement is respected, and freedom is cherished. There is a world where people are grateful for the opportunity to make a difference, and exercise that opportunity all the time.

Where is that world? It is all around you.

It is in the actual, day-to-day lives that regular people live in accordance with objective reality. It exists far away from the fantasy realm of celebrities, politicians, self-proclaimed experts, and professional scolds.

It is a world where hope, faith, and authenticity are essential parts of each day’s experience. It is a world with a bright and positive future, where goodness works to create more goodness, where kindness is a real and prominent thing.

Though certainly not perfect, it’s a world that’s grown increasingly fulfilling for a long time, and will continue to do so. It’s a world that insists on truth, no matter how difficult, and that makes it a very good place to live.

— Ralph Marston

August 20

Better than anger

Your anger is justified and understandable. But it’s not very healthy or helpful, and it doesn’t feel so great.

You don’t have to carry that anger around, letting it weigh you down. You can transform it into a more positive force.

Instead of being angry about a particular problem, perhaps you could fix the problem. Even though you didn’t cause it, you can have the good fortune of being the person who solves it.

Seething about what’s already happened won’t bring new value into your life. Yet taking positive action to improve the situation can benefit you and a whole lot of other people.

Let go of the need to exact punishment and retribution. Fill yourself instead with the desire to promote goodness, cooperation, and understanding.

You can do a whole lot better than anger. Get creative, identify an alternative, and choose not to let anger wear you down.

— Ralph Marston

August 21

Experience adventure

In countless ways you experience adventure. What adventure are you embarking upon today?

Is it the adventure of working yourself into top physical condition? Or perhaps it’s the adventure of supporting people as they heal and recover from trauma and injury.

Is your adventure in working to make a process or an organization more effective and productive? Maybe it’s leading a group to laughter and joy.

The opportunities for adventure are everywhere. Living with an adventurous spirit is essential to keeping life going and revealing its most profound purposes.

Adventure is so much more than just some faraway dream. Adventure is key to how you successfully deal with reality.

Life offers it to you and you owe it to life. Live the adventure every day.

— Ralph Marston

August 22

Struggle

You struggle to understand. And that struggle gives you profound, indisputable ownership of whatever understanding you acquire.

Struggle is unpleasant. That does not mean it is futile.

Struggle is a difficult, draining experience, and from that experience can come great value. In times of struggle you discover and develop your strength by putting that strength to a meaningful test.

Struggle is unfair, uncomfortable, inconvenient, dangerous, painful, frustrating. Get yourself through the struggle and you have something real, something consequential, something that empowers every corner of your life.

You don’t always choose your struggles. Yet you always have the choice as to how you face them and what you do with them.

Within life’s greatest struggles are life’s greatest victories. Take them as they come, give your best, and seek to transform your struggles into a life of meaning, of purpose, of consequence.

— Ralph Marston

August 23

Get involved

The party has now begun. It’s your time to join the fun.

The sun just came up on a new day. Plenty of good things are possible, many of them are starting to happen.

It’s somewhat useful to speculate about what might be, or might have been. What’s much more valuable is to jump right in and get involved, right now.

When you participate you’re sure to encounter awkward moments, inconvenience, frustration. Go ahead, participate anyway, with all you have, being exactly and honestly who you are.

Get involved, commit yourself, live like you mean it. Make it your intention to make something rich and rewarding with the time in front of you.

The biggest regrets are for opportunities missed. Don’t miss this one that’s here for you now.

— Ralph Marston

August 24

Perspectives

Take a close and thoughtful look at the situation you’re in. Then fly up in the sky and look again, this time from forty thousand feet.

Experience yourself in the picture. Then envision yourself out of the picture and see it from various perspectives that are not yours.

You are important to you, and your immediate surroundings are important to you. But you are not the center of the universe, and it’s in your best interest to keep that always in mind.

How will your ideas, your plans, your actions, your words affect all the other people they touch? How can you tailor your undertakings to create maximum value for the most people?

Every dilemma, every opportunity, every conflict, every enterprise looks one way when you’re in it and another way from outside. Seek to understand and to find value in those varying views.

Perspectives sharpen your insight and boost your effectiveness. Get as many of them as you can.

— Ralph Marston

August 25

As it all unfolds

You’d like to find out how the story ends. But if you simply skip to the end, you miss the heart of that story.

It’s good to have matters resolved. Yet it takes time to happen, and you don’t want to ignore everything else in your life during that time.

When you’ve made a decision, or set a process in motion, give yourself time, give life time to let the results emerge. You’ll gain nothing by hovering uselessly around the oven while the cake is baking.

Do what you can, when you can, to move the process along. And when you’ve done all there is to do for the moment, point your focus elsewhere.

Your time, effort, and attention have great potential value. Invest them where that value can be realized.

With patience and understanding, welcome the time needed for situations to be resolved, questions to be answered, choices to play out. Continue living your life as it all unfolds.

— Ralph Marston

August 26

Value-producing efforts

Building a house requires a great amount of time and effort. Yet once the work is done, the house continues to provide value for decades, or even for centuries.

Planting and growing a field of spinach, or beans, or wheat takes much time and attention. Yet once the crop is harvested it provides nutritious food for hundreds or thousands of people.

There is similar benefit in the productive work you have the opportunity to do. With a significant commitment of focused action you can end up creating an even more significant reward.

You can’t possibly remember all the value-producing efforts you’ve put forth over the course of your life. Nevertheless, much of that accumulated value continues to enrich your life to this day.

Keep that in mind the next time you find yourself in the midst of a frustrating, challenging task. There’s a good reason you’re doing the lengthy and difficult work you do.

The value you’re able to create accrues to your benefit and to the benefit of many others, and can endure long after the work is done. It’s a good arrangement, one you can always be eager to make the most of.

— Ralph Marston

August 27

Put your values into action

The most powerful argument is not an argument at all. The most powerful argument is a good and fulfilling life.

The values and opinions you preach about will mostly just annoy people. Yet the positive results you achieve will cause those same people to seek you out.

Anybody can say anything, can scold, speculate, theorize, and make all sorts of fantastic promises. Yet what really matters is what you achieve, the difference you make in your own life and the lives of others.

There’s something you can do today to make tomorrow better than it otherwise would have been. You have the opportunity to put your values into action rather than just putting them into words.

Yes, what you say can be powerful. But it has to align with what you do, or your words ring hollow and meaningless.

Give more than lip service to what you care about. Give your time, your resources, your continuing effort, and embed your values deeply into life by the way you live.

— Ralph Marston

I was always told" practice what you preach"

August 28

Understanding and appreciation

The people around you don’t understand or appreciate you as much as you’d like. Get over it, get on with life, and save yourself a lot of angst.

You cannot force or guilt or otherwise manipulate someone else into more fully understanding or appreciating you. What you can do is work on your own understanding and appreciation of others.

Sure, it’s nice when people make an effort to understand you and let you know how much they appreciate you. But you have nothing to gain by repeatedly focusing your thoughts on how much or how little you’re appreciated.

Put that energy into offering and acting upon your own appreciation. Do the work to deepen your own empathy and understanding.

Other people will by and large relate to you based on how you relate to them. Any resentment you feel will be reflected back to you, so it’s in your best interest to let the resentments go.

Satisfy your sensible desire for more understanding and appreciation in the world in a way that actually works. Seek to improve your own understanding and express your own appreciation every chance you get.

— Ralph Marston

August 29

Bright new value

Something or someone you’ve depended on is suddenly gone, or severely disappoints you. That hurts.

When life takes a disappointing turn, you can’t avoid the pain. What you can avoid is prolonging that pain.

The loss leaves a gap in your life. You can’t rewind the clock and prevent what’s already happened, but you can certainly work to fill the gap.

It will never be the same as it was. Yet you can make it better than it is now, perhaps even better than before, in a new and different way.

You can continue to love and treasure what you’ve lost while also moving forward. You can take the goodness you experienced and give new life to it in a fresh new form.

Respect that your disappointment is well founded and honor the value you’ve lost. Then stride forward into the world, eager to seek bright new value for the benefit of yourself and those around you.

— Ralph Marston

August 30

Life’s real adventure

How many more memes do you need to look at? How many more feeds do you need to scroll through?

How many more pundits do you need to hear saying exactly what you expect them to say? How many more incidents of sensational, shocking behavior do you need to read about?

Imagine something completely different than all that. Imagine the unparalleled satisfaction of focusing your thoughts upon a single, engaging subject for a couple of hours, or months.

Rather than being pushed along through someone else’s narrative, consider forging your own trail toward truth and original insight. Instead of listening endlessly to what is chosen by a distant algorithm, listen at length to what resonates with your spirit.

There has never been more adventure available to anyone than the adventure available to you right now. Do the work to envision and to follow life’s real adventure, and savor the deep fulfillment it brings.

Life’s real adventure cannot be prepackaged in a warehouse or stitched together at a data center. It comes when you commit yourself to truth, purpose, value, and effort, and it’s a magnificent thing to experience.

— Ralph Marston

August 31

Reach across time

Consider for a moment all the things you’re thankful to your past self for doing. Today is your opportunity to do more of the same.

You can act in the present to make your future self thankful. In so doing, you’re able to reach across time and make improvements to experiences before you even have those experiences.

That’s an opportunity too valuable to waste. It’s an exciting possibility that can stimulate your imagination and push you into positive action.

You’re constantly in the process of creating consequences. At the same time, you’re always living with the consequences you previously set in motion.

By keeping those facts in mind when you make choices, you can optimize the quality of the consequences in your life. You can bring about consequences you look forward to rather than ones you dread.

Your future self is eager to be thankful to the person you are right now. Go right ahead and do what’s necessary to exceed those expectations.

— Ralph Marston