Daily Motivator - February

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February 1

Positive perspective

Most of the time, the only real victim of your negative attitude is you. And there’s no one who gets any help from it.

So, if it hurts you and helps no one, what’s the reason to have it? That’s a good question, and one you can benefit from asking yourself.

Perhaps you’re angry about what has already happened. Or perhaps you’re anticipating something you’re not pleased about.

A negative attitude will not change any of that for the better. It will just add more misery to an already difficult situation.

A negative attitude is always your choice. And it’s a choice you can always decline to make.

So the next time you’re tempted to get all gloomy and glum, simply stop and think about it. Instead of punishing yourself with negativity, empower yourself with a more positive perspective.

— Ralph Marston

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February 2

Grow stronger

New strength begins with your willingness to be stronger. Once you choose inside to be stronger, you are.

Decide to be more resilient, and you have what it takes to live up to that decision. Commit to be more courageous, more disciplined, more purposeful, more tolerant and generous, and suddenly you are.

No person, no situation, no deficiency is stopping you from growing in strength with every experience. It’s a choice you can make again and again.

It’s easy to hide from your own potential strength, and many people will enable you to do so. But your better choice is to connect with that strength, put it to good use, and make more of it.

What if some of the things that previously filled you with dismay and fear, were suddenly to inspire courage and determination? What if you decided that yes, you can do some good and useful thing you’ve always told yourself you could never do?

The strength you have is the strength you choose to allow and develop in your life. Think strong, act strong, and grow stronger with each passing day.

— Ralph Marston

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February 3

Boredom

Boredom can play a powerful, positive role in your life. Allow yourself the opportunity to regularly experience it.

After a while, nonstop activity and stimulation will blur into meaninglessness. Too much of anything is not a good thing.

Give yourself time and space to process all that’s going on in your life. Give yourself the chance to imagine, to reconsider, to wonder, to wander, to relax.

Step aside from the destructive illusion that you can have it all, see it all, do it all. Take a breath, take a rest, and reconnect yourself with meaning, with purpose.

Winning is not a matter of grabbing everything there is to grab, of knowing all there is to know. Winning at life means living it well, with balance, with quiet, peaceful times to make sense of it all.

Times of boredom help you discover who you are, what you love, and how much you care. And those are extremely powerful things to know.

— Ralph Marston

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February 4

Rise above foolishness

Don’t make a bad thing worse by continuing to be upset about it. Get over it and get on with your life.

From time to time you’re going to be inconvenienced, insulted, distracted, taken advantage of, or worse. Quickly, decisively deal with the situation, get some distance from it, and then let it go.

If you’re not in a position to do anything positive about it, then accept it. Direct your focus to the good and useful things you can do.

Sure, there are things that have upset you. Yet you have nothing to gain by continuing to remind yourself how much you dislike them.

Choose not to waste your time and energy assembling a collection of grievances. You have so many better things to do.

Spend each day living and doing, not seething and complaining. Rise above the foolishness of others, and live every moment on your own best terms.

— Ralph Marston

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February 5

New and wonderful worlds

Taste what you have not ever tasted. Look upon what you have not ever seen.

Think about what you have never before considered. Introduce yourself to those you do not know.

This day is not here to be a repeat of yesterday. Treasure and be thankful for all you know, and act on every opportunity to add to it.

Turn down a road where you’ve never traveled. Explore an opinion that conflicts with your own.

Yes, it’s good to find comfort and strength in what’s reliable and predictable. Yet you’ll also draw great energy and inspiration from what surprises you, from what you didn’t know was there.

Challenge your concepts of what life can be. And you’ll continually discover new and wonderful worlds.

— Ralph Marston

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February 6

Communication and cooperation

You don’t have to completely agree with another person in order to have a fruitful dialogue with that person. You and that other person don’t have to fully understand each other in order to cooperate with each other.

Agreement and understanding can be worthy goals. But don’t let their absence serve as an excuse to shut down communication and cooperation.

Indeed, the way to increase understanding is through robust communication. The way to arrive at agreement is through cooperation.

Great progress is made by people who agree to disagree. Peace and prosperity come not by forcing everyone to agree, but by respecting and tolerating differences of opinion.

Your enemy is not the person who disagrees with you. Your enemy is the person who refuses to interact with you other than by brute force.

The good things you enjoy in life are brought to you by communication and cooperation among people of widely differing backgrounds and viewpoints. It is in your best interest, and everyone’s, to keep up that enormously beneficial behavior.

— Ralph Marston

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February 7

Use this moment

Do you want to make something more difficult? Then put it off until later.

Or would you prefer to have the most options, the greatest leverage, the lowest cost? Then get it done now.

The longer you put it off, the more it will cost you and inconvenience you. The sooner you start, the more value you’ll be able to create.

Are you avoiding an unpleasant task right now? It will be three times worse if you put it off until tomorrow.

Do the difficult things when they are easiest. Use this moment to create value instead of trying in vain to borrow that value from the future.

Do yourself a favor. Go ahead and get it done.

— Ralph Marston

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February 8

Give yourself to kindness

When you offer kindness to others you also give great kindness to yourself. For kindness engages your most powerful instincts, and propels them into action.

Your kindness connects you to the best that is within you. It brings out your highest levels of intelligence, effectiveness, creativity, and understanding.

Undertake an act of kindness, and you compel yourself to care, about others, about yourself, about life. Kindness sharpens your focus on the goodness, the beauty, and the limitless potential of the moment you’re in.

Give kindness, without concern for whether it is deserved or not. Because no matter what, you deserve and benefit from the extension of your own kindness.

What is the kindest thing you can do, right now, for someone else? That’s also the kindest thing you can do for yourself.

In your work, in your play, in your life, find ways to give yourself to kindness. You’ll give great value to everyone involved, especially including you.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 9

Fresh start

Today is a fresh start. Make something good with it.

You’ve learned a lot about how life unfolds, what works, what doesn’t, what holds you back, what moves you forward. Now is your chance to put all that knowledge to good use.

You’ve seen the mistakes that others have made, and your own mistakes as well. Today you can benefit from those observations, avoiding the pitfalls as you work to make good progress.

You’ve felt the sting of regret and the joy of purposeful achievement. Beginning right now, you can choose to create much more joy and much less regret.

Here is where your future begins. Be honest with yourself about what you really want to do, to experience, to become, for every choice leads you in a specific direction.

Go ahead, feel the miracle of life as it glows within you, and fill your world with purpose, with meaning. Take the fresh start that begins right now, and live, and love, and give, and grow.

— Ralph Marston

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February 10

Prevent regret

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had done certain things today, and avoided certain other things. Today is your only chance to make that wish come true.

Once you allow regret to happen, there’s no way to get rid of it. The only way to avoid regret is to prevent it.

That’s what you can do right now. You can prevent tomorrow’s regrets, and create tomorrow’s gratefulness.

Choices you make right now will lead inevitably to specific realities in the future. This is when you determine what those realities will be.

Regret is painful. Now, while you have the chance, you can avoid adding to its pain.

Imagine looking back from the future at the choices you’re about to make. Now, choose only those things you know you’ll be thankful for, and prevent the regrets you know would come.

— Ralph Marston

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February 11

Outside the pretenses

To live with humility, grace, compassion, understanding, is a good way to live. Not apart from the world, but not immersed in its absurdities either.

To see what is there, and comprehend, but to not be fearful or arrogant. To find a good and fulfilling way forward, with tranquility as a constant companion.

So many, so often, strive for fame and riches in an effort to acquire such a satisfying state of being. Yet that state is available at any time, in any situation, simply by untethering from all pretenses.

Yes, prosperity and the respect of others, those things have real value and goodness. Yet if they are nothing but an end in themselves, with no deeper purpose behind them, they destroy rather than enrich.

Can you let go of what you’ve been told you need, and discover the true richness you already have? If so, you’ll be loved for who you are, not merely for who you pretend to be.

Is there any greater peace, any higher fulfillment, than that? Step outside the pretenses, and allow your beauty to be the beauty of life itself.

— Ralph Marston

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February 12

What are you avoiding?

What are you running from, doing everything possible to avoid? What if you turned and faced it?

What are you putting off, making excuses about, pretending is not there? Imagine the clear, crisp freedom of actually dealing with it.

What work is your deepest purpose nagging you to do, that you just can’t bring yourself to start? What if you made yourself take the first step, and what if it wasn’t so bad?

What beauty, what value, what fulfillment, are you withholding from yourself, from life? Maybe this is the day to start doing the work that will bring it into being.

You’ve come a long way, with much to be thankful for. Now, put that thankfulness into action, and do what you are called to do.

You’ve been skillful and persistent at avoiding. Just think what will happen now, when you put all that skill and persistence into achieving.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 13

Plenty of great work

The more you talk about what you’re going to do, the less you do. Stop talking, start doing.

You have to have a plan, but the plan is not the achievement. Once you have a workable plan, stop adorning it, start working it.

You can find plenty of activities to fill your time. Yet your purpose is not to merely fill time, but to make good use of it.

You know expectations drive results, so how do you create the most powerful expectations? You pounce on the opportunity, you jump into action.

Obtain raw energy from the challenge, from the moment, from your intention. Feel the power and effectiveness as you push that energy into motion.

Don’t let yourself get stuck waiting, wishing, planning, talking, or making excuses. You have plenty of great work to do.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 14

Get yourself through it

It’s not easy, what you must do. It’s frustrating, inconvenient, complicated, and sometimes doesn’t even make sense.

But here’s the thing. Get yourself through it and you make yourself stronger.

Get yourself through it and watch your confidence skyrocket. Get yourself through it, and all sorts of new possibilities will open up to you.

You’re not meant to sit around and have all the goodies in life handed to you for free. You know you’re a whole lot better than that.

So don’t you dare even think about feeling sorry for yourself when things get a little difficult. There’s nothing to feel sorry about, because you have a chance to make a real, meaningful difference.

Get yourself through it, and make things better for everybody. Get yourself through it, and get yourself to a whole new level of purposeful living.

— Ralph Marston

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February 15

Unbounded mind

Allow your thoughts to escape the confined space they’ve been bouncing around in. Realize how far the possibilities stretch beyond the horizon.

What you see, what you know, what you’ve considered, pales in comparison to all of existence. And all of existence comprises only a tiny fraction of what can be.

You stand right now surrounded by a limitless expanse of possibilities. Send your thoughts out to explore its far reaches.

Accept that you do not know the extent of what you do not know. With humility and eager curiosity, let your thoughts go beyond where they’ve gone before.

Some new and powerful insight at this moment awaits your discovery. Venture all the way out to meet it, and earn its benefits for your life, for your world.

Give your thoughts a taste of freedom, and then let them have their fill. Partake of the endless treasure that your unbounded mind can imagine.

— Ralph Marston

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February 16

Dive into the richness

What will awaken your sense of adventure? What will energize your desire to make a difference?

What will re-ignite in you the feeling of wonder regarding all that is possible? Whatever it is, wherever you must go, whomever you must talk with, whatever challenge you must tackle, do it.

If you’re not thrilled with life’s possibilities, you’re not paying enough attention. If you’re not acting on the best of those possibilities, you’re letting opportunity and value and fulfillment slip through your fingers.

Wake up to what you already know is there. Make plenty of room in your life for the wonder that is your life.

You have much more power and ability than you’ve been using lately. Set your sights on a purpose that will entice your best efforts out of you, consistently and persistently.

Life is your immense treasure and the challenge to live it well is your great ally. Now, dive into the richness.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 17

Select your experiences

Thoughtfully select your experiences rather than grabbing indiscriminately at everything in reach. Don’t limit your possibilities, but don’t dilute yourself either.

To experience everything at once is to experience nothing at all. Just because you can have a thousand simultaneous thrills, doesn’t make it a fulfilling way to live.

Give value to whatever you’re doing by giving sustained focus and care to it. Much of what makes anything in life good is your ability to invest yourself in it.

The quality of each experience is based not only on what you do, but also on what you refrain from doing. Give each moment of your life the respect and love it deserves by not cramming it full of worthless rubble.

Quantity becomes a burden if there’s no quality in it. Say yes to quality experience by saying no to all that would detract from it.

Resist the urge to spread your limited time across every option. Step aside from the fear of missing out on this other thing or that, and give yourself the joy of a focused and meaningful experience.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 18

Positive example

Your degree of honesty affects not only you, not only those with whom you interact, but everyone. Your values, acted upon again and again, underpin the values of society at large.

No person, no group, no predetermined process, decides what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Yet these questions do get decided, every day, by the way every person lives.

Your beneficial behavior goes far beyond you, in distance and in time. Every day you change the world, not by your intention to do so, but by the way you choose to live.

What actions would you take if you knew your whole world was taking its cues from you? In a very real way, that’s exactly what happens.

The way you live comes back to you, in places and times and flavors impossible to imagine. Your behavior contributes to the standard of behavior for everyone.

Everything you do sets an example. It’s in your best interest, and everyone’s best interest, to be the most positive example you can be.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 19

Will you?

You’ve told yourself for so long that you can’t. And now it’s really true.

But you could. If you would.

You’ve assembled so many excuses, put it off so many times. Even after all that though, you can do it, if you will.

The world, it seems, is against you. And no one is willing to give you a break.

No one, that is, except you. And despite all the other factors, your choice, your commitment to make it happen, that’s what really matters.

So today, finally, after all this time, will you? Your future is in your hands.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 20

Heritage

You come from a long line of survivors. Every one of your ancestors survived long enough to raise at least one child.

For vast stretches of time, that kind of survival was rare and hard won. It required strength, vision, intelligence, flexibility, care, compassion, and a massive measure of persistence.

You have all that embedded deep within, passed from generation to generation. You are, literally and undeniably, the product of thousands of the most successful people who ever lived.

And here’s something even better to consider. Right now, today, you live among billions of other people with a similarly successful heritage.

In such a situation, the possibilities for progress are staggering. Though the problems of the moment can seem overwhelming, they pale in comparison to the potential for goodness and value.

Real people successfully traversed countless centuries of brutal challenges in order for you to enjoy this moment. When deciding what you can do, when choosing what you will do, be sure to keep that in mind.

— Ralph Marston

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February 21

True betterment

Give yourself some love. Give your world some goodness.

Fortify your words, thoughts, actions, with truth. Invigorate your relationships with thoughtfulness, with kindness.

Refresh your sense of purpose by choosing what is good, just because it is good. Find great joy in life’s beauty without needing to possess it, or control it, or consume it.

Leave behind the weariness of struggling to keep up deceptive appearances. Feel the sweet relief of allowing authenticity.

Carry hope into dark corners where it has been missing for too long. Allow peace to settle upon ground that has been exhausted by strife.

With your choices, your perspective, your energy, enable life to flourish at its highest level. Envision true betterment, for yourself, for all, and let your life be its faithful advocate.

— Ralph Marston

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February 22

Untapped potential

Many challenges, you could have risen to more effectively. Many moments, you could have lived more sensibly.

Now, let them teach you, inspire you, improve you. For regardless of what you may have squandered, you have useful, meaningful progress to make.

Today you can make fruitful use of the wisdom you’ve earned. In your current situation lives the opportunity to fulfill your untapped potential.

You’re certain you could have done better. So now, discover how much better.

Pain and joy have taught you what works and what doesn’t, what’s meaningful and worthwhile, and what isn’t. With love, with sincerity, put that great store of wisdom into action.

With gratitude for what has been, for what can now be, dive into your untapped potential. And from its depths bring new and wondrous richness.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 23

Seasons

The cool of autumn is a welcome respite from summer’s heat. The warmth of spring is a promise that winter has gone away.

Spring would not be so glorious without the winter that precedes it. Autumn would not be so welcome if the heat of summer had not grown so wearisome.

A new season is always on the way, and with it, changes, opportunities, risks, promises, mystery. In every season you’ll find new joys to live, work to be done, progress to be made, greetings as well as goodbyes.

Life changes, for that is its very nature. Nothing you can do will stop the changes that come with each season, and you wouldn’t want to anyway.

In those changes, as inconvenient, difficult, and painful as they can often be, is the glorious substance of living. In every change is your chance to make a change for the better.

Let the relentless progression of the seasons inspire your own unrelenting progress, your own rewarding changes. Live with more purpose, love, kindness and generosity, filled with a joy that no passing season can take away.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 24

Increasing gratitude

Gratitude multiplies your possibilities. It compels you to see more than you’d otherwise see.

Extend your gratitude beyond limited, specific things. Seek to create an abiding perspective of gratitude that applies to everything.

Be thankful, and then be thankful for being able to be thankful. As you ascend in gratitude, your view of life’s abundance becomes more expansive, more enlightened, more effective.

With sufficient gratitude, what once would have appeared as an obstacle snaps clearly into focus as an advantage. What once would have drained you, now energizes you.

Find new ways to be thankful. And you’ll surely create new pathways to success.

Make it your intention to live with increasing gratitude. Your experience of richness and fulfillment will keep pace.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 25

Your best every time

Sometimes you’ll be disappointed that your actions didn’t make more of a difference. Other times, something you didn’t think would matter much, has a major positive impact.

You simply can’t know in advance exactly how things will turn out. What you can do, is give your best every time.

When nobody else notices, you’ll still know you did your best. That’s a valuable thing to know.

If everybody notices, you’ll be thankful you did your best. And so will many others.

Many factors, you can’t anticipate or control. Yet you can control the quality of your efforts, to great benefit.

Give your best every time. No matter what happens later, you’ve made the smartest choice.

— Ralph Marston

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February 26

Only now

Some of the opportunities you have today, you may not have again for a very long time, if ever. Treasure them, appreciate them, live them now when you can.

When you’re able to make a difference, make it. When you’re able to give kindness, give it.

Looking back from tomorrow, or a year in the future, what will you wish you had done today? Right now is your one chance to make that wish come true.

What, also, will you wish you had refrained from doing? That’s another wish you can fulfill in advance, right now.

This is when your life is lived. This is when you give love and value to all you love and value.

Make the time, do the work, go to the trouble. Today’s opportunities are yours right now, and only now.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 27

Pace yourself

Live with purpose and ambition. But don’t burn yourself out attempting to do everything all the time.

When your efforts have established some good momentum, keep adding to those efforts. But don’t work so hard and fast that you lose sight of who you are.

An email, or text message, or other seemingly urgent interruption, on rare occasion requires your immediate response. Yet the vast majority of them can wait for you to handle at your own pace.

Make good use of your opportunities to get good work done. Then set aside your work for a while, and give yourself plenty of time to just be.

Sure, you can make a little progress very quickly by wearing yourself out. However, you can enjoy much more progress over the long haul when you pace yourself.

Make your work sustainable by caring for the person who does it. Go fast enough to get it done, and slow enough to make it endure.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 28

Align with reality

Align yourself with reality. And you’ll empower yourself to successfully deal with that reality.

In this time, in this moment, clearly see the world as it is. Calmly, soberly accept that there are many things you can do nothing to change.

Acknowledge the reality of now, letting go of the need to worry, fret, complain or deny. Then, filled with honest energy, you can set about to create the most positive outcomes.

Your fervent wishes will not change what has already happened. Yet your realistic, committed efforts can absolutely improve how the future unfolds.

Face the truth, face the challenge, face the fear. Feel the great power and effectiveness of a confidence that is based in reality.

Even in the worst of times, opportunities abound, new richness can be created, overwhelming problems addressed. Acknowledge reality, and invest your time and energy in making great improvements to it.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 29

Tough times

Every setback is also an opportunity to recover. Every challenge is also a chance to become stronger.

You’ve been successfully dealing with difficult, unexpected developments your whole life. It’s a skill you’ll continue to improve upon, and one that always serves you well.

The path forward is never perfectly straight and unhindered. Its twists and turns give life richness, novelty, and unique character.

Your life has value precisely because it comes at a cost. Each day, each new situation, enables you to bear the cost and add to the value.

You’ve encountered doubts, fears, and challenges before, and successfully worked your way through them. When you come upon them again, remember how effectively you can do what you do.

In the tough times of life are the seeds of its great beauty, joy and fulfillment. Nourish those seeds well, and reap the rewards that surely will come.

— Ralph Marston