Daily Motivator - May

[bluidkiti]

May 1

Keep the good value coming

Refuse to rest on your success. Instead, expand on it.

Don’t make success itself the biggest threat to your success. Be careful not to let complacency water down your desire to make a difference.

When success comes, respond with gratitude, humility, and ambition. Choose to see your success not as a reward, but as an opportunity.

If the only thing you do with your good fortune is consume it, you’ll soon be left with a bitter regret for the opportunity you’ve missed. Instead, grab that opportunity while you have it, and build on your success.

Working toward each achievement is where the real joy of achievement lives. Experience a whole lot more of that joy by continuing to do the good work of achievement.

Make each success into a new starting point. And keep the good value coming.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 2

Envision the best

The task is difficult, but that does not mean it is impossible. The problem is complicated, yet somewhere, somehow, a solution can be crafted.

Though the news can be troubling, it doesn’t mean the world is falling apart. Though any given moment may be unpleasant, even painful, still there is so very much to live for.

Acknowledge the troubles, and then look up from them. Look up, look forward, and see the positive possibilities.

Dare to grab hold of the burdensome aspects of life and move them in a more positive direction. Dare to see life clearly as it is, and to fashion some real progress out of it.

It’s easy to complain, to throw your hands up in despair, to hide away, to become bitter and disenchanted. Yet you actually have far more reason to be hopeful, positive, and enthusiastic about the future.

Dare to have faith in the good things you can do, in the goodness you can inspire, and act on that faith. You create your future from the way you see it, so envision the best and make it so.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 3

Welcome to now

Every moment comes with a fresh new set of possibilities. Every moment gives you the opportunity to choose the best of those possibilities.

Just because you have been disappointed, angry, frustrated, or discouraged, doesn’t mean you have to stay that way. Going forward from now, you can make another choice.

You gain nothing by remaining stuck in a state that’s holding you back. You achieve nothing by expending your energy to maintain a negative perspective.

Now is the opportunity to change for the better, so wrap yourself around that opportunity. Realize that you can now exist and function beyond whatever may have been keeping you down.

Sure, you may have had a perfectly good reason to be negative. Now, with this new moment, you have an even better reason to move positively forward.

Welcome to now and all its brand new possibilities. The best ones are ready for you to bring them to life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 4

You decide

You can make your experience of life today better than the life you experienced yesterday. You can make conditions in your world tomorrow more favorable than conditions in your world today.

Is life getting better or worse, more fulfilling or more desperate? That is for you to decide, to determine, and to implement with the way you live.

The way your life unfolds is not dictated by some predetermined, immutable script. The story of your life is written largely by the choices you make in every moment.

Sure, you are subject to many forces and influences beyond your control. Yet things don’t just magically get better, and neither do things just cruelly and randomly get worse.

What you do, day in and day out, plays the major role. Your attitude, your thoughts, your actions, your willingness to persist, your desire to embrace responsibility, all form the quality of the life you experience.

Whatever the trends, whatever the zeitgeist, your life gets better or worse mostly because of what you do with it. You know what works, what improves your world, so keep reminding yourself to do it.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 5

Everyday progress

Slow, steady, incremental progress doesn’t make the headlines. Yet it does make life profoundly better.

Millions upon millions of people, for example, quietly and reliably make their mortgage payments each month. Over time, with no fanfare, this ends up building a massive amount of collective wealth in the hands of individuals.

Although heroic efforts do occasionally play a role, life advances mostly because of slow, everyday progress. It’s the kind of progress you can make right now, and again in the next moment, the next day, month after month, year upon year.

Though it may not seem like much that you can make a small positive effort, over time those efforts add up. Over time, those things that just take a moment here and a moment there, have a major impact on your life.

Stay constantly connected to your values, your goals, your dreams, all you love and care about, as you go through each new day. Be ever willing to support it all with even the most seemingly insignificant actions.

Over time, your everyday efforts will change your world. Live with love and a positive perspective, and those changes will be for the better.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 6

Clear intention

If you set off in a fuzzy, ill-defined direction, you end up getting nowhere. When you just have a vague idea of what you want, that doesn’t give you enough to go on.

Instead, make your intention clear. Make your intention specific, and meaningful.

Clarity is an essential part of achievement. When you are sure about exactly what you intend to create, you’re already well on the way to making it happen.

Spend the time and thought, do the work to zero in on precisely what you wish to accomplish. Create an intention so full of details you cannot help but make it happen.

In your mind, see the colors, hear the sounds, feel the unique texture of where you wish to go, of what you intend to create. Envision a rich abundance of substance that will draw you toward it no matter what obstacles you must traverse.

Give clear, precise focus to your efforts. And your efforts will yield great results.

-Ralph S. Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 7

Free of the problem

It is painful, inconvenient, messy, awkward and complicated to deal with a problem. And the sooner you do it, the better.

Hiding from a problem, or running away, or denying it exists, does not free you from that problem. By avoiding the problem you only make it worse.

To be free of the problem you must acknowledge it, face it, and do something positive about it. Any other choice just delays the inevitable.

What problem has been troubling you, that you would like to free yourself from? Today, stand up straight, feel your power, and put that power to work.

Commit yourself to make the necessary effort that will create a beneficial resolution. Decide that it’s time to get beyond the problem, and do the work to make it happen.

Put an end to the worry, the anxiety, the wasted energy of avoidance and denial. Put your best capabilities to work, and be free of the problem through the power of your positive actions.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 8

Listen well

When you listen to another person speak, really listen. When you listen, seek to focus your attention not on your own familiar thoughts, but on the new thoughts being presented to you.

Effective listening is difficult, demanding effort. It is very much worth the effort.

When you listen well, you can gain great experience and wisdom quickly, in concentrated form. Listening can transfer great swaths of knowledge from another person’s mind into your own.

Give your mind plenty of opportunities to wander, but not while you’re listening. The opportunity of listening is too valuable to waste.

Those who speak to you are offering to share unique perspectives, thoughts, experiences with you. Graciously accept the offer, and don’t dilute its value by spending the whole time thinking of what you’re going to say in reply.

When you listen, remember to listen with gratitude, respect, and attention. Put forth the effort to listen well, and bring new value into your life that will always be yours.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 9

Do the work

Whether the work is difficult or easy, is not the issue. It is yours for the doing, yours for the achieving.

Let go of the thought that you must struggle to get it done. Go ahead, do what the work asks of you, follow where it leads, add the value of your thought and effort.

Release your need to resist the effort. Allow your thoughts to flow, focused on making a difference, on being useful.

Do not seek refuge in doubts or excuses. Choose instead to push deeper into the best possibilities, doing all you can to create new value.

You have good work to do, and the opportunity in this moment to make progress. Right now, you can transform fleeting time into lasting value.

Do the work, do it well, free of hesitation, resentment, or struggle. Give your best, and you’ll be living at your best.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 10

Quality thoughts

Thoughts can be poisonous, or they can be nourishing. What kind of thoughts have you been thinking?

What if every time you had a thought, that thought became reality? Would you be careful about choosing your thoughts?

Although your thoughts on their own do not magically become real, everything you create does begin with a thought. The quality of your life mirrors the quality of your thoughts.

Your thoughts can enable you, empower you, encourage and energize you, or they can hold you back and keep you stuck. Fortunately, you choose the thoughts that fill your mind.

Though thoughts can seem to be fleeting and inconsequential, your thoughts are always leading you in one direction or another. Choose those thoughts that lead toward the kind of life you wish to live.

Reality is what it is, yet what you make of reality is based on how you think about it. Think positive, substantive, meaningful thoughts and follow where they lead.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 11

Live the fortune

If you wait until you’re ready, you’ve waited too long. Start now and get it done.

If you’re certain you’ll succeed, you’re not reaching high enough. Step beyond what’s comfortable, expected, familiar, and stretch yourself to new levels of achievement.

You have the great fortune of being here today. Live the fortune, actualize your potential.

Make something of the massive abundance in which you’re immersed. Do something worthy of all the beauty that lives within you.

If you’re tripping over excuses, limitations, distractions, raise your awareness higher. Lock your focus on being of service to all you love and care about.

Don’t get ready, don’t get set, just get going. The great fortune of this day is here now and you are too, so do not hesitate to make it yours.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 12

What today is about

Decide what today is about. Give it a purpose, give it a reason, give it a specific direction.

Decide what today is about for you, and honor the decision by living it that way. Give it a solid purpose so you don’t waste any of its priceless time.

Make your intention strong and you’ll make the distractions disappear. Make your purpose unequivocal and you’ll generate real value with your time and efforts.

Give your life in this moment right now the full respect and attention it deserves. Give yourself a consequential way to live the day ahead.

This is when you can do what you’ve always told yourself you’d do. Today is your chance to steer your life in the most meaningful direction you can imagine.

Before another moment passes, decide what today is about. Give to yourself and your world the great benefit of a day well lived.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 13

New strength

New strength begins with a decision. Decide to grow stronger today.

New strength is built with effort. Invest time in focused effort today, and create strength you can utilize from this day forward.

Every experience is best experienced from a position of strength. Make the choice, do the work to put yourself in that position.

Draw your strength from authentic purpose, in faith, from all you love and value. Feel your strength increase through action, persistence, commitment, caring.

Put your strength to work in a good and meaningful way, and it increases. Feel the benefits of what your strength can do, and you’ll have it doing more.

In every difficulty, every victory, every setback and every joy are opportunities to gain new strength. Embrace those opportunities, live them with positive purpose, be stronger.

-Ralph S. Marston

[willbe275]

The was an awesome read.

[bluidkiti]

May 14

The difficult work

It feels good to do good. It feels good to push yourself, to challenge yourself, and to meet those challenges.

Give yourself that good feeling. Find out, again and again, how much you can grow, improve, achieve, advance.

The more demanding the work, the more satisfying the reward you get from it. Demand the best from yourself, and deliver it.

The easy stuff won’t get you very far, won’t stimulate, inspire, or fulfill you. Be willing for the endeavor to be difficult, and you’ll be able to make it great.

Whatever is difficult to obtain, create, develop, is valuable to have. Envision the difficulty of the effort as a shield, protecting and maintaining the value of the fruit of that effort.

Do the difficult work, get through that protective layer. And reach the great value inside.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

DEEP...

[bluidkiti]

May 15

Whatever route is available

You don’t have to overcome your hesitation, your doubt, your fear. You can still have the hesitation, doubt, and fear, and act anyway.

You don’t have to fight against your reluctance. You can simply accept that reluctance, and then do what must be done.

You don’t have to be inspired to the maximum degree. Just do the job, and the inspiration will take care of itself.

Put one foot in front of the other. Make one phone call, and then another.

A perfect, frictionless pathway is nice, but certainly not necessary. You can work with what you have, with its distractions, frustrations and other imperfections.

The perfect pathway is probably not going to appear, but you can nevertheless get where you wish to go. Keep taking whatever route is available, and you’ll get yourself there.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 16

Confident humility

Whatever you’re doing, a sense of superiority will make you worse at it. Humility, on the other hand, will make you better.

The moment you think you’ve got it all figured out, your progress stops. Instead, continue to advance and improve by reminding yourself how much more there will always be to discover.

Confidence is positive and empowering, but arrogance is deadly. Be confident, but not at the expense of your respect for others.

Don’t burn up all your energy proving how great you are. Invest your time and energy being thoughtful and helpful.

See the victories not as proof of your supremacy, but as opportunities to offer more value to life. See the defeats not as personal affronts, but as chances to learn and grow stronger.

Take care not to waste your time in delusions of grandeur. Embrace the power of confident humility, and live well.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 17

Truth within

More truth lives within you than you have yet allowed yourself to discover. Open up to it, give expression to its wonders.

Envision the spark of an idea catching fire. See it blazing its way into reality through your mind and your hands.

Seek for beauty, meaning, substance, joy to enter into life because of your life. Live each moment in a spirit that welcomes truth and goodness, and gives them living expression.

Have the courage to feel what you have never felt. Engage your patience, your diligence to give voice to those feelings.

Live to know, to feel, to see what is true. Live to bring that truth to life in your own unique way.

Vast stretches of love, beauty, truth, goodness today await your discovery. Live to let it all flow into life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 18

Bask in the wonder

Bask in the wonder of life. Give yourself to awe, to love, to the experience of goodness.

Warm every corner of your awareness with appreciation. Earn your best possibilities by bringing them to fruition.

Exhaust yourself with joy. Align yourself with the goodness that can be found in every situation.

What you have, whatever form it may take, consists of a treasure that has no equal. Open your senses and your sensibilities to let the beauty in.

Savor the opportunity to live each moment. Surprise yourself with how much more, and more, you can give.

No effort is too burdensome, no trouble too deep to vanquish the wonder that is yours to experience. Let the richness of that wonder come to life right now in you.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 19

Eyes of love

In all your coming and going and doing and being and knowing, smile, be of good cheer. One way or another, on every day and the next, there’s always something good to live.

As noisy and hectic as the days become, still you carve out moments of peace. As plain and tedious as the task may be, it cannot stop your thoughts from soaring to the very highest of heights.

Some people may seem rude and brutish when they come your way. Yet most are likely just a little unsure inside, and would benefit from your kind words, even if they fail to show it.

Though dark clouds may fill the whole of the sky, warmth from sunlight still comes through. Something good is always afoot, and you can find it when you choose.

The most heavily fortified problems are really vessels of great opportunity. Whatever frustrates you to the core can also inspire and make you determined.

Life today will offer whatever you choose to see. Decide to look with eyes of love and live the best you know you can be.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 20

Small changes

Small changes can make a big difference when applied over time. Make a small positive change, then stay with it, and time works in your favor.

Small changes are easy to implement, and just as easy to abandon. So when you make a small change, you must also make a big commitment.

Most of life’s progress is not made in big, highly consequential leaps. Achievement most often comes from taking one small positive step, then another and another.

There is some small change you can make today that can make your life significantly better a year from now. Make it, and most importantly, stick with it.

Stick with it by constantly reminding yourself why. Stick with it by staying focused on your purpose.

You have the ability right now to make a small change that will eventually lift your whole world. Make a positive change, stick with it and stay focused, reaping more and more benefits as life unfolds.

-Ralph S. Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 21

This day to live

This day will change you, and you will change this day. Today day can improve you, and you can improve today.

Progress is not ever inevitable, yet always possible, within reach. Today offers you the chance to make it happen.

Don’t curse those things that hinder you. Learn from them, understand, create a way around them, devise new ways to make your progress anyway.

Don’t take for granted the factors that assist you. Nurture, support, appreciate, encourage, and make good use of them while you can.

People, circumstances, and random events will do what they will. Step forward with confidence, knowing you can take it all in stride, adding value to each moment along the way.

You have every reason to be positive because you have this day to live. Start right now, giving new joy, meaning, and fulfillment to all of life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 22

Power to decide

If you assume you’re limited by the conditions of the moment, you most assuredly are. When you feel the situation is holding you back, it’s definitely holding you back.

Are you so tightly constrained by your obligations that you cannot seem to move? Have the noisy, confusing distractions drowned out your ability to focus?

You don’t have to abandon those obligations in order to be free of their stultifying grip. You can quickly regain focus and intention without running away from the turbulent situation.

You always have the power to decide. Everything streaming into your awareness is filtered, amplified, attenuated, and assigned meaning, by you.

When you’ve decided that life is overwhelming and you can’t possibly cope, it is, and you can’t. When you’ve decided you can focus and thrive and make great progress no matter what is going on, you will.

Will it be bitterness, frustration, and excuses, or richness, fulfillment, and joy? No matter what, no matter when, no matter the time or place or circumstance, you decide.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 23

Small positive change

Somewhere right now there is a small, positive change you can make in the way you go through life. Make that small change, stick with it, and the results can profoundly influence your entire world.

Perhaps you’ve burdened yourself with a destructive habit that you can now choose to leave behind forever. Or maybe there’s some simple, useful action you can add to your daily routine.

It could be as easy as choosing to start each day with a smile instead of a complaint. Or you could identify something that has always made you angry and just decide you’re not going to let it get to you anymore.

Life is filled with opportunities for making small, positive changes. Look for them, and you’ll see those opportunities in every direction.

Even one small change can have a large positive impact on your life because the benefits of that small change are repeated day after day. Keep adding more small, positive changes from time to time, and the results can be astonishing.

Give yourself the gift today of a small positive change in your life. Continue to enjoy the rewards you receive far into the future.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 24

Through the difficulties

Much of the burden of any difficulty is your desire to avoid it. What if you could choose instead to accept it, to endure it, in fact to thrive on it?

Think of something you must do, but do not wish to do. Imagine letting go of your resentment toward it, and how much more energetic you will become.

You have the potential to do great things. Fulfilling that potential will necessitate some pain, discomfort, effort, frustration, tedium.

Are those things really so bad? Or are they the requisite tumult of blessings being born, pathways to lasting goodness and unique value?

Do not make the difficulties worse by avoiding them, complaining about or resisting them. Instead, force those difficulties to fulfill their promise by growing, progressing, achieving through them.

Life is difficult, and filled with great richness. Go fervently through whatever difficulties may arise, giving new meaning, expression and joy to the richness.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

This so awesome and true...
Life is difficult, and filled with great richness. Go fervently through whatever difficulties may arise, giving new meaning, expression and joy to the richness.
All I can say is, Amen.

[bluidkiti]

May 25

Take a break

Many of your best ideas arrive when you’re not trying to have them. Take a few moments, or a few days, and take a break.

To sharpen your focus, relax it for a while, on a regular basis. Give your mind time and space to make sense of all it takes in.

Living with purpose does not mean you must tightly schedule every millisecond. Spend time acquainting yourself with the world outside your own agenda.

You rest better when you’ve worked hard. You work better when you’ve rested well.

Give your life, your work, your spirit, the benefits of balance. Allow focused intention and relaxed serendipity to support each other and to elevate all that you experience.

Work, play, determination, relaxation, focus, curiosity, effort, and peaceful contemplation. A rich life is a balance of all these good things.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 26

Respond with persistence

When you’ve had a great success, what’s your best response? Learn from what you’ve done and do it again.

When you’ve had a big disappointment, what’s your best response? Learn from what you’ve done, adjust accordingly, and do it again.

It’s good to have skills, knowledge, connections, resources. What truly moves your life ahead, though, is to add persistence.

Are you too dismayed or burned out to make another effort? That’s precisely when that next effort can make the biggest difference.

Instead of giving up, make the assumption that there is some change you can make, some approach you can take to keep going. Then do the work to find that way, and to persist in following it.

When you’re up, when you’re down, respond with persistence. The number of efforts required for the success you seek is whatever number is necessary.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 27

What would you like to see?

Imagine it is tomorrow and you’re looking back on today. What would you like to see?

Whatever it is, now is your chance to make it happen. You have one opportunity to determine how you’ll live this day, and that opportunity is right here, right now.

Every moment is a choice. When making each choice, consider how it will play out tomorrow, or a week from now, or next year.

The actions you take, and the actions you fail to take, have real and continuing consequences. Today, you can choose what those consequences will be going forward.

The way you live today determines how your life will be when you arrive at tomorrow. Make the choices that will make you thankful for your good sense.

Though this day will be over soon, what you do with its moments will echo far into your future. Realize what a powerful opportunity that is, and make something grand out of it now, while it’s here.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 28

Powerful positive start

Before you go to bed tonight, give yourself a compelling reason to get up and get started right away tomorrow. Be clear in advance, motivated in advance, and you’ll give the day a powerful positive start.

Don’t waste half the morning wondering what you’ll do or convincing yourself to do it. You already know tomorrow is coming, so build in your plan and your enthusiasm for it today.

Create a shield to protect yourself from indecision, distraction, and regret. Energize your life, your mind, your experience with a day that gets off to a great start and then just keeps getting better.

Tomorrow you’ll wake up to a whole new day, filled with great possibilities. Invest a little time and thought today, getting yourself prepared to make full use of the opportunity.

Infuse yourself now with excitement about the progress you can make. Let your positive expectations take root and begin to grow.

A new day is already on its way here, and with it you can choose to do many great things. So decide today to give your tomorrow a powerful positive start.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 29

Living your beliefs

Don’t be content to merely believe the truth. Seek to experience it for yourself.

Your belief may be strong and unwavering. Yet there is a difference between belief and certainty.

Reach that certainty by living your beliefs, by continually putting them into practice. Solidify your understanding of the truth by experiencing its essence for yourself.

It can be interesting and stimulating to speculate about what might or might not be true, what might or might not happen, what might or might not work. What’s much more powerful, though, is to know for sure.

Take what you’ve been told, what you’ve come to believe, as a starting point. Then take it further by discovering its truth for yourself.

Honor your trust, your faith, your belief by transforming it all, through your actions, into certainty. Truth rises to a whole new level when it comes to life in you.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 30

Awareness of the future

What’s extremely valuable about the future is that you know it is coming. You can prepare yourself, and take actions now that will benefit your future.

You can delay gratification, develop positive relationships by being considerate of others, and work to develop new skills. These strategies, and many others, create large rewards in the future from relatively small efforts in the present.

If you save ten dollars a day, each day, in a few years you’ll be able to pay your future self ten thousand dollars. When you factor the future into your decisions, those decisions create a more desirable future.

Looking toward the future also will improve your discipline, effectiveness and experience of fulfillment today. As you’re building a great future you can live at your best in the present.

Just knowing that the future is coming puts you at a great advantage. Being able to do something positive about it vastly multiplies that advantage.

Claim the full benefit of your good fortune. Make choices that enable you to live well now while also creating your best possible future.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

It amazing what we can do one day at a time...

Claim the full benefit of your good fortune. Make choices that enable you to live well now while also creating your best possible future.

[bluidkiti]

May 31

When you do it

The work will be done when you do it. The problem will be solved when you solve it.

The money will be yours when you earn it. The skill will be yours when you learn it.

It’s not magic that creates the good and desirable things in life. It is focused, committed, persistent effort.

If you want life to improve in some particular way, then do the improving, be the improver. Jump to your feet and make it happen.

Skip straight past the wishing, begging, agonizing, theorizing, and wondering when the situation will get better. Step up, take action, and keep at it until you get the results you’re after.

You know what makes a difference, what brings value to life, and you know you can do it. So go ahead, without further hesitation, and get it done.

— Ralph Marston