Daily Motivator - May

[bluidkiti]

May 1, 2019
The purpose that is you

Have the courage to ask yourself this question, and to answer it. What means more to you than anything?

Your deepest purpose is beautiful, powerful. It can also be terrifying, inconvenient, uncomfortable.

It’s easy to get caught up in chasing all the things everyone else chases. What’s infinitely more fulfilling is to invest your life in what truly matters to you.

Just knowing what that is, requires great effort, humility, honesty, and faith. Actually following through on it, asks even more of you.

Yet you have the opportunity to fashion real meaning out of the moments, to sincerely care, to make a difference. You owe it to yourself, and to all of life, to take that opportunity.

Choose the challenge of filling every day with caring, with love, with meaning and fulfillment. Choose the purpose that is you, and live it well.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 2

Good things take time

Instant gratification might feel good for a moment. Yet it cannot compare, in value or endurance, to the good things you can build over time.

The achievements you’ll treasure most are the ones that are the longest in coming. They’re the ones into which you put the most of who you are.

There simply are no substitutes for prolonged effort, commitment, and patience. And there certainly are no substitutes for the valuable things they will bring into your life.

Perhaps it seems shrewd to take all you can from life, as soon as you can. The far wiser approach, however, is to give to life, as much and as often as possible.

What you give is what ends up lasting the longest. What you give will build value and fulfillment far into the future.

Have patience, and know that some of the greatest treasures in life take a long time to fully arrive. That gives you the time, and the opportunity, to put the best of yourself into them.

— Ralph Marston

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May 3

Small improvement

What can you do a little bit better today than yesterday? A small improvement is easy, and it can make a big difference.

A small improvement is much more desirable than no improvement. And a small improvement is always within your reach.

Even if no one else notices your small improvement, you will know. And that will set you up for further improvement tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

When you decide to make just a small improvement every day, those improvements add up on top of each other. Soon, you will have made significant progress.

Once you’ve done the necessary work, do just a little more, make it a little bit better. Take advantage of the momentum you’ve already worked to put in place, and get a little more value from it.

Your effort has earned you the opportunity to add to it, to improve on it. Do your work a little bit better each time, and those small improvements will add up to big results.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 4

Act the way you want to feel

Want to feel more positive, energetic, enthusiastic? Then act like it.

If your thoughts are defeating you, overpower those thoughts with positive behavior. When you can’t think your way out of a negative attitude, start acting your way out.

A single positive action can quickly overcome hours or days worth of negative feelings. Get yourself on the move, get yourself physically doing something useful, and your frame of mind suddenly improves.

Even better, find a way to do something positive and helpful for someone else. Something as simple and easy as a genuine smile can make a big difference for everyone who experiences it.

Stand up straight, hold your head high, breathe deeply, walk confidently forward. You will immediately feel the way such actions improve your outlook on life.

When you take positive action, your whole being takes notice and follows along. Act the way you want to feel, and that’s precisely how you’ll be.

— 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

Where life is at the moment

If you assume somewhere else is better, then you deprive yourself of enjoying and benefiting from where you are. If you yearn for a different time, then you steal from yourself the time you’re currently going through.

It’s great to have dreams, goals, plans for where you want to go, what you want to experience. Work toward those aspirations, while also fully inhabiting and treasuring the life you have right now.

When someone is speaking to you, listen, really listen, with all your awareness. Avoid becoming absorbed in what you’re going to say in reply, or wondering when you can check your social media feed.

When you do anything, do it with everything you have. If you’re always thinking of other times, places, people and issues, you’re only living a fraction of your life.

Right here, right now is where you find peace, joy, love, wonder, healing, connection, and so much more. Don’t render yourself absent from the value of what is.

This is where life is at the moment, and there is so much richness to be lived. Be fully present for it all.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 7

Great progress

Want to make your work a whole lot easier? Stop fighting against the necessity of getting it done.

Yes, there are reasons why you haven’t gotten the work finished. But don’t let them become excuses for never getting around to it.

Of course, you face serious challenges, but they don’t have to intimidate you. Choose instead to let them energize you.

Go ahead and accept the fact that the task is difficult, that life is difficult. Then step forward and deal with each difficulty.

Put your effort into creative, productive achievement rather than complaints and self-pity. Use your time and resources to work through the difficulties instead of cursing and avoiding them.

Push yourself forward through the challenges, and experience the genuine fulfillment of doing so. Make the great progress you are here to make, every chance you get.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 8

Lost opportunities

Don’t let today’s moments deteriorate into tomorrow’s lost opportunities. Make good use of the time you have now, while you have it.

Regret is easy to create, and painful to live with. You create it by doing nothing, and the pain appears when you eventually realize that opportunity has passed you by.

Now is when you can steer clear of tomorrow’s regrets. You can put today’s hours and circumstances, resources and energy to meaningful use.

Capture the unique value of now by living it fully, by working it diligently. Appreciate the potential richness that is right here in front of you, and bring it to life.

Tomorrow will have its own opportunities. But if you squander today’s time and opportunities, you won’t be able to replace them.

Live today fully, work its opportunities productively, and use its moments wisely. Then you can wake up tomorrow not regretful, but inspired and ready to do even more.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 9

Life privilege

What a privilege it is to be living this day. What good fortune you have to see, to know, to learn, to give, to unite, to love.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in minor issues of the moment. All too easy to forget what a great privilege you hold, being alive right now.

Spend a few thoughts dwelling on that privilege, and the good you can do with it. Feel the power and goodness of life as it is focused in this time, in this place, through you.

Wade out into the cool, flowing stream of existence. Let this day’s possibilities invigorate you to the core.

Discover new energy in the growing awareness of all the ways you can make a difference. Experience the satisfaction of transforming your unique privilege into value that lifts up all of life.

With all it encompasses, in whatever way it has unfolded, your life itself is a great privilege. Now you have the privilege of living life for the greatest good you can envision.

— Ralph Marston

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May 10

Make the problem smaller

How do you make a problem smaller? By going to work on it.

When the problem is just a concept, it can grow in your mind to limitless proportions. But once you start to actually work on it, you see firsthand that it’s not as difficult as you thought it would be.

Simply taking the first step to solve the problem, to meet the challenge, creates a dramatic change. You transform it from a force that is pushing against you to a path upon which you can move forward.

Continue with your effort, and the problem increasingly changes from a negative influence into positive value. As the problem gets smaller, the payoff for your work gets bigger.

Each step you take brings you closer to having the problem completely behind you. All the while, your strength, ability, and confidence continue to grow.

Whatever problem you encounter, don’t let it intimidate you. Quickly get to work on the problem, make it smaller, and keep going until you’ve put it far behind you.

— Ralph Marston

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May 11

Modest efforts

There’s something you can do right now that will be better than doing nothing. Go ahead, get it done.

There’s an action you can take that won’t be perfect, but it will be effective, and improve things. Go ahead, take that action.

Perhaps you have many conflicting options, and are unsure which one would be ideal. Pick one, go ahead with it, and you’ll quickly discover whether or not it’s right for you.

Progress is not a fairy tale in which everything works out perfectly. Progress is messy, inconsistent, inconvenient, fraught with uncertainty, and yet even with all that, it’s preferable to no progress at all.

The small improvement you make right now won’t save the whole world overnight. Yet it’s a whole lot better than doing nothing at all, and the small improvements do add up.

Right now is your opportunity to do what you can, to push the darkness back a little, to pull your life ahead a little. And little by little, today, tomorrow, and the next, your modest efforts can grow into big results.

— 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

Good things take time

In time, the clouds will part and the sun will shine. In time, wounds will heal and understanding will grow.

You cannot have it all right now, and that’s really not even what you want. Good things take time, and that gives you the opportunity to fully appreciate them when they arrive.

Good things take time, and that provides you with the enjoyment of looking forward to them. It gives you the chance to develop genuine enthusiasm for whatever is coming your way.

If you push and shove to be the first, what you’ll really be is the worst. If you have no patience, you’ll experience no real fulfillment.

Any pleasure or reward you acquire in an instant will fade just as quickly. Choose instead to seek those lasting rewards that require an investment of your time, your commitment, your love and patience.

Good things take time. Make use of your time to fill your life with those good things.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 14

Make meaning

Now is when you give new meaning to life. Now is when you add richness and substance to your experience.

From the overreaching concepts, from the minuscule details, you can create meaning in this moment. Through your actions, your insights, your attention, your caring, meaning comes to life.

The world is a wondrous place, but do not consign yourself to merely watching. Engage with life, give of your genuine self, and make meaning.

Treasure all the meaning you’ve created and experienced, but don’t let it make you complacent. This new moment, this unique situation, is your opportunity to create more.

In the ordinary, in the unexpected, in what’s peculiar, in what’s familiar, you’ll find the potential for new meaning. Let that meaning flow from deep within you into conscious experience and creative expression.

Here is your day. Fill it with meaning.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 15

Focus on it

Don’t let your awareness become diluted into insignificance by a bewildering accumulation of random stimuli. Guide yourself with clear intention through meaningful, authentic experiences.

Be fully where you are. Focus completely on what you are doing.

If you attempt multiple things at once, you won’t do any of them well. You have the power for amazing feats of achievement, when you choose to focus that power on one task at a time.

You have a world of information in the palm of your hand. Yet true wisdom comes when you look up from the screen, into the eyes of the person you’re with, and really listen, really engage, really focus and understand.

Pay attention, and connect yourself to the unique value of the moment you’re in. Don’t let your awareness run away from the rich opportunities that are right in front of you.

It’s ridiculously easy to distract yourself, and extremely foolish. There is great treasure right here, right now, if you’ll simply discipline yourself to focus on it.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 16

Appreciate your life

Right now you have life, awareness, intelligence, time and space in which to act. You have the ability to connect with others, opportunities to observe, to learn, to care, to make a difference.

You can think and plan, act and create. You can sense and feel and make good, smart choices.

All these powerful resources and capabilities are so familiar, it’s easy to take them for granted. You’ll benefit, however, from regularly reminding yourself of them, and of all the good things you have.

When you consciously appreciate what you have, you naturally make better use of it all. Gratitude strengthens your connection to the abundance in your world.

There are very real advantages to being who you are, to having what you have. Remind yourself of those advantages, and open yourself to new possibilities.

Truly appreciate your life, along with everything it encompasses. And do good, valuable, fulfilling things with it all.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 17

Valuable experience

Look back on yesterday, or last week, or the past six months, and ask yourself this. What could you have done differently to improve your outcomes?

Could you have been more ambitious, more open to opportunities? Could you have been more patient and understanding, more authentic, more generous with your time and attention?

Whether the results you’ve been getting are spectacular or not so great, there are specific ways to improve on them. And you know, more than anyone else, what they are.

Perhaps you could have spent more time on certain efforts and less time on other activities. Maybe you could have been more receptive to the advice of certain people and less influenced by pressure from other people.

You know what helped you and what hurt you, what energized you and what held you back. If you were doing it all over again, in what specific ways would you do it better?

Ask yourself that question, and then let your answer inform and improve your choices going forward. Consider what you would have done differently, and make positive use of all the valuable experience you’ve earned.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 18

Start strong

Start each day the way you want to live it. Your thoughts and actions in the first moments have a strong influence on how the rest of the day goes.

Choose a great attitude, a powerful perspective, a meaningful purpose, and step boldly forward. Get the day off to a positive start that can build into a tenacious momentum.

As the day unfolds, hold fast to your intentions. You’ve decided how to live this day, so follow through with energy, enthusiasm, determination.

With your actions, show life how you want it to go. With your persistence, show yourself how purposeful and committed you can be.

Make good use of your ability to adapt to changing conditions. At the same time, refuse to be thrown off track by meaningless distractions.

Start strong, with a positive purpose that will last the whole day. Build on that strength, hold steady to your purpose, and finish the day stronger than ever.

— 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

Your real life

Fantasy is fun and entertaining, and certainly has its place. Yet as attractive as fantasy may seem, real life is far better.

Unlike fantasy, where everything is simple and awesome, real life is complicated, inconvenient, fraught with challenge. And that’s what makes real life so incomparably fulfilling.

Fantasy may excite you, but it will never satisfy your deep desire to make a real difference in the real world. Fantasy can ignite your imagination, yet actual effort is necessary to transform what you imagine into reality.

Reality, with all its problems, contradictions, frustrations, and disappointments, is where your efforts matter. Reality is where you push through the challenges and work to lift yourself above the difficulties.

Right here, right now, on this gritty, uneven expanse of reality, is where you do what you do best. This is where you experience yourself making a real difference, and know how good and right it feels.

Indulge yourself in some enjoyable fantasies every once in a while. Then take that positive energy and invest it in the true fulfillment available exclusively in your real life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 21

Criticism

If you’re going to do something useful, then you’re probably going to be criticized. When you set out to solve a problem, you’ll quickly encounter someone’s criticism.

By all means, be open to valuable feedback. And learn to simply ignore the useless criticism.

Most people are open to positive changes, but a few will object to anything you do. Those few can be so loud and vicious as to seem bigger and more influential than they actually are.

Decide at the outset to push forward with the courage of your convictions. Become realistically and sufficiently convinced that what you’re doing is right, so that the criticism doesn’t get to you.

Listen respectfully to well-reasoned opposition, consider it, learn from it, and make necessary adjustments. At the same time, ignore the screeching and name-calling from those who have nothing better to do.

Know that the criticism will come, and decide that you won’t let it stop you. Make achievement your response to the criticism.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 22

Truth, goodness, and integrity

Truth, goodness, and integrity are not just empty platitudes. They are practical, powerful, positive strategies.

Life has real meaning and choices have real consequences. Truth, goodness, and integrity end up producing the most beneficial consequences for the largest number of people.

Truth, goodness, and integrity are not easy, not always convenient in the moment. Yet they have infinite staying power.

Truth can be hidden, disguised, avoided, but truth eventually overcomes all the efforts to suppress it. Goodness lives deep in the heart of everyone who loves life, and even in the worst of times it will inspire people to be their best.

When anything is built with integrity, it’s destined to endure, to prevail, to provide lasting value. That’s true whether it’s someone’s life, or a physical structure, or an organization.

Avoid the temptation to be less than your best. Fill your thoughts, goals, words, actions, relationships, your whole life, with the power of truth, goodness, and integrity.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 23

Today’s joys

Later is too late. Live today’s joys today.

Honor your commitments, do your work. But don’t let it become an excuse to put off the joys you can create and experience right now.

Joy refreshes you, inspires you, energizes you. And there’s a lot of good you can do with that energy.

Joy connects you with purpose, with love, with all you value. Joy reminds you why you do what you do, why you seek what you seek.

Joy is yours to choose here, now. Joy asks only that you allow it, express it, share it, and when you do, the moment is filled with its energy.

Offer the value of joy to those you’re with, to where you are, to what you’re doing. Live today’s joys, for the only time to do so is now.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 24

Active participation

Grab your life today and inject some meaningful intention into it. Then act on that intention.

If you have no intention to do anything useful, you won’t get anything useful done. Give yourself a clear objective for this day, and imbue its moments with meaningful experience.

Enjoy the feeling of knowing you’re doing what you set out to do. Be inspired by the satisfaction of making real progress.

Within a few hours, the opportunities of this day will be gone, forever irretrievable. Decide, early on, precisely how you will make use of those opportunities before they vanish.

Then forge ahead with purposeful activity. With your efforts, harvest today’s opportunities and transform them into lasting value.

Don’t waste this precious day of your life wondering, worrying, complaining, or speculating. Decide what you will do, then do it, and give life new richness as the result of your active participation.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 25

Tested by life

Do you want to know what you’re capable of? Then get yourself in situations where you’ll be tested by life.

You cannot acquire capability and confidence just by admiring them and wanting them. You have to be tested, challenged.

The way to know for sure how to do something, is to do it. To be absolutely confident in your ability you must experience making use of that ability in challenging situations.

Seek out challenges, and what you’ll find are opportunities to expand your own competence. Be willing to be tested, and you’ll be able to grow stronger.

Go where you’ll be compelled to learn, to improve, to innovate, to endure. When the situation demands that you must, you will.

Choose often, willingly, to be tested by life. And you’ll enable yourself to pass with flying colors.

— 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

Beyond mere wishing

Wouldn’t it be nice to be free of a particular burden? Wouldn’t it be nice to be living life in precisely the way you want to live it?

Yes, of course it would be nice, and in fact it would be great. So get yourself to work making it all happen.

Wishing is fun, yet you can do a lot better than just wishing. You can transform your wishes into specific goals, and then transform those goals into reality.

If there’s something you’re wishing for, let that wish point you in the desired direction. Then transcend your wishing, and start taking real, effective steps in that direction.

Let the energy of your wishes take you beyond mere wishing. Let that energy push you into action.

Think of all the things it would be nice to do, to have, to be, to know. Then get up, get going, and enjoy the remarkable experience of bringing those great things into your world.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 28

Establish a target

What’s the best outcome you can imagine? Go into the situation expecting to get that outcome.

Expect the best, and if reality doesn’t match your expectations, go to work on that reality. Work relentlessly in the direction of your expectations.

Your expectations dictate what you’re willing to accept and what you’re not willing to accept, from yourself, from others. Set those expectations high and your results will follow accordingly, because you’ll see to it that they do so.

Your expectations won’t magically materialize into reality. What they will do is firmly establish a target.

That target exerts influence whether you’re consciously thinking about it or not. Your choices, your actions, your level of performance will aim toward your expectations.

Expect the best. And you’ll instinctively focus your efforts, your energy, everything you have, on making it so.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 29

Think well

Think well of the moment, and you will do well with it. Think well of the people you encounter, and make those encounters more fruitful.

Everything you do, begins with how you think. Every word, every facial expression, every action, has origin in thought.

The way you think of this day determines how you live it, and what you make of it. The way you think of each situation, each turn of events, guides and directs your specific responses.

A successful day, month, year, flows from a successful, positive frame of mind. You can’t think negatively about life and then make something good and valuable out of it.

With your thoughts you decide what you focus upon, what you invest yourself in, what you do with what you have. Choose those thoughts that lead you in the direction you most want to live.

Think well of life. You’ll experience and fulfill it accordingly.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

May 30

Answer the call

Stop making up stories about why you can’t. Start taking the initiative and do what you can.

You’re capable of so many great things if you’ll just do them. Let authentic purpose push you into action, now.

Conditions are not perfect, you’re burdened with challenges and limitations. Have the courage, the vision, to see it all as the great opportunity it is.

Life is not fair, some people seek to deceive you, and disappointments abound. But that doesn’t mean you have to resign yourself to being a victim.

Indeed, if everything were already perfect, there would be no value, no joy, no fulfillment in working to make the world better. As it is, life’s present shortcomings put you in an ideal position to create a splendid future.

Feel the weight of positive possibility as it calls to you, inspires you, and encourages you. Answer the call, and work to create all the great results you’re capable of producing.

— Ralph Marston

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May 31

Time of transformation

The current moment is special, different in an important way from every other moment. The current moment, right now, is a time of transformation.

You may have been frustrated for hours, or weeks. Yet right now, you can choose to get past that frustration, to take a more positive approach.

Perhaps for the last few days you’ve been a little sluggish and unmotivated. You can transform, right now, into being energetic and productive.

What’s so great about right now is this. The negative choices, feelings, and attitude can stop, and the positive elements of your life can expand.

Right now, you can make a clean break from the past. You can leave behind what has not worked, and double down on what does work well for you.

As difficult, limiting, disappointing as the past may have been, now it’s over. Now, in this time of transformation, is your great chance to do a whole lot better.

— Ralph Marston