Daily Motivator - February

[bluidkiti]

February 1

Living action

Live richly for the sake of doing it. Experience for yourself the highs and lows, the pains and pleasures, the wonders, joys, disappointments and satisfactions.

Embrace every opportunity to go, to learn, to see and hear and know and connect. Give courage and action to your curiosity and let it push you to new levels of participation.

Refuse to enslave yourself to what other people think. Set forth to fulfill the robust potential that lives within you, not to impress but to magnify life’s richness.

Respect your fears, listen to what they have to say, but don’t let them prevent you from living fully. Treasure all you already know and always be eager to experience more.

Consider, evaluate, plan, and prepare, but don’t stop there. Put your ideas, your intentions, your dreams into living action.

Your life is a real and beautiful miracle, not just a concept. Feel the immense, unique value of you, and take an active role in fully bringing the richness to life.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

Happy February Tammy and Kracker, thanking
God for safely bringing us through the month of
January one day at a time. This is the day the
Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.
May God's blessing be upon you and your family
during the month of February and beyond.
https://youtu.be/p8Pj8EVcvLg

[bluidkiti]

February 2

Value where you are

See the value in where you are. Consider the benefits of what you have, who you’re surrounded by, the knowledge and skills you possess.

It’s easy to envision better scenarios than the one you’re currently in. Yet the reality is, you are where you are, and there are certain good things about that.

If it’s possible to complain about your situation, it’s also just as possible to find what you can appreciate about it. By focusing on the good aspects and by making use of them, you can multiply and expand on them.

Imagine looking back on this day five years from now. What will you be thankful you had today?

More importantly, what will you be thankful you were able to do? Now is your opportunity to follow that path, to seize upon those positive possibilities.

Fix your attention on what is good, what you can use, what you can do, and resolve to do your best with it all. See the value, see the potential, see the way forward, and put your time and effort into making it happen.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 3

Opportunity of now

Today is not perfect yet it’s perfectly usable. What good results do you choose to create with it?

The temptation is strong to let important work slide another day, or two, or twenty. Imagine the power and positive consequence of saying no to that temptation.

Sometimes it’s easy to rationalize that the efforts you make won’t make much of a difference. Yet the moment you do act, the moment you do create value, that kind of thinking goes quickly away.

Life’s shallow, fleeting pleasures can be enjoyable for a moment. But they’re nothing compared to the deep, abiding joys that come from creating real value.

Right in front of you stretch precious, potent minutes and hours. You can work to mold them into meaningful and enduring achievements.

Reach inside and reinforce your connection with purpose. Embrace the opportunity of now and let its fulfillment unfold in all you do.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 4

Feeling stuck

Are you feeling stuck where you are? That’s great, because it means you’re ready to get moving in a more rewarding direction.

Within you is the desire to move away from some specific aspect of your current situation. You can harness that desire and transform it into progress.

From your feeling of being stuck, you can extract energy, motivation, and effective action. To do that, look beyond where you are and decide on the direction you wish to go.

There’s passion in the feeling of being stuck, but it’s a negative passion that won’t lead to anything other than resentment and despair. Yet you can choose to reshape it into passion for a positive purpose.

When you’re feeling stuck, ask yourself why. Develop a clear and detailed picture of what you’re being prevented from doing, being, feeling, or expressing.

Then you can take whatever actions get you moving toward what you desire. Turn the intense feeling of being stuck on its head and use its energy to push you in a positive, fulfilling direction.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 5

Painful lessons

You’re painfully aware of what you should have done and what you should not have done. Now is your opportunity to get something good in return for that pain.

Last time, and the times before that, you learned your lesson. Now, put that lesson into positive practice.

Before you act, consider this. A year from now, what will you wish you had done, and what will you wish you had avoided?

There’s a good reason the painful lessons are so painful. The purpose of the pain is the make sure you remember.

Yet remembering is not enough. You must also adjust your actions to avoid the same pain again.

What should you have done last time? This time you have the good fortune, and a powerful, memorable reason, to make sure you do it right.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 6

Trust matters

Who do you trust? Who places their trust in you?

Where there is trust there is great value, and the potential for much more. Trust removes friction from interactions and enables highly effective collaboration.

No amount of money or power can buy trust or force it to exist. Your trust in others, and their trust in you, can only be built with time, with diligence, with honesty.

Over time, the choices you make have a crucial effect on the amount of trust in your life. In each encounter with someone else, you can either be building trust or impeding trust.

Any deviation from honesty and authenticity, no matter how insignificant in the moment, can shut out trust in the long term. Your genuine commitment to truth, respect, and dependability, on the other hand, gives trust a place to grow.

Trust matters in pretty much every area of life. Make the choices, day after day, that enable trust to flourish.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 7

Faith is a promise

You cannot know all the answers. Yet you can have faith that the answers you seek do exist.

Faith can keep you going when logic and reason alone have failed you. Faith gives you deeper, more sustained access to strength than would otherwise be possible.

Faith is often conflated with belief in a supernatural power. But it’s actually trust in a higher power that’s entirely consistent with nature and reality.

Faith humbly acknowledges that there are more possibilities than you can imagine. Faith instills the truth that a significant number of those are possibilities for goodness.

Faith is not a certainty that can be verified by the current facts you have at hand. Indeed, it is quite the opposite.

Faith is a promise you can embrace in your most intimate realm. And often, such a promise is exactly what you need.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 8

Structure and possibility

The structure in your life provides essential support. Yet to do this it must necessarily confine and restrict you.

You benefit from the order, resilience, and predictability provided by structure. You also benefit by regularly freeing yourself from its confines.

Within your supporting structure you can work with effectiveness to achieve what you desire and reach toward your dreams. Outside that structure is where you can bring desires to the surface and use them to clarify those dreams.

Go out now and then into unknown territory. Expose yourself to the chaotic onslaught of raw possibilities and bewildering experiences.

Then bring some of the possibilities back to the relative safety and security of your home. Go to work on those possibilities, and enrich your world with the best of them.

Great adventure is to be found in balancing chaos with order, existing structure with novel possibility. With courage, with purpose, with love, keep bringing the adventure to life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 9

The good you choose to do

You have what it takes to make a positive impact on this day, this place, this world. Do what is necessary to give the best you have to give.

Your whole life has positioned you to bring new value into being in your own unique way. Now is your time to act on that potential, that obligation.

You don’t know everything but you know enough. You don’t have limitless power but you do have plenty of ability, and opportunity, and genuine care about the quality of life.

Look at the world around you, at the people living in it, and ask yourself this question. How can you be of service?

Long years, decades, centuries from now, that’s what will matter. And as soon as this next moment you can feel the power of the good you choose to do.

Open your eyes as the sun comes up and a priceless new day of life emerges into being. Greet it and live it with the resolve to make it the most useful and generous one yet.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 10

All you can achieve

Identify a modestly ambitious objective you wish to achieve. Divide it into twenty five roughly equal parts.

Each day, set aside some time to work on completing just one part. Each week, give yourself a one-day break from the effort.

After a month of such measured, persistent effort you’ll have the thing done. Not only that, you’ll also enjoy the satisfaction of knowing you did it.

When you expect to accomplish a task all at once, you’re in danger of feeling overwhelmed or of quickly burning out. But spread it out over a reasonable period of time, and you can make it into work you actually look forward to doing.

Imagine what you could achieve in a couple of hours if you broke the task into five-minute parts. Think of what you’d be able to create over the course of a year by working on it for three hours a week.

Give yourself something specific and meaningful to do, and you turn what likely would have been wasted, unfulfilling moments into lasting value. Set a goal you can reach step by step by step, and be amazed at all you can achieve.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 11

Solid focus and effort

You have a little bit of time and a lot to do. That’s not a good reason to be in a frantic rush.

Do your best to focus all your attention on one task and get it done before moving on. Worrying about what you need to do next won’t help what you’re doing now or what you’re doing next.

Few people ever have as much time as they would like. Even so, many people are able to accomplish all sorts of amazing things with the time they do have.

You can too, right here, right now. Just give good, quality attention to the work at hand.

Conditions are not ideal, perhaps you’ve been put in an unfair position, the task is difficult and complicated. Yet you have the ability to set aside all those factors you can’t control.

When you do that, the results can be almost magical. Without the frantic rush, with no agonizing over the difficulties, with solid focus and effort, there’s much you can achieve.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 12

Something new

You feel something new today. It’s a level of confidence you have not felt before.

You have a sense that life is going in a more positive direction. Your purpose is stronger, the possibilities are more clear.

When sunshine breaks through the clouds, it looks a little brighter than you’ve noticed lately. Instead of being annoyed by the cool breeze, you welcome the fresh experience of it.

Accept that this positive feeling is real. Then step forward and do something with it.

Certainly the world is not perfect. Yet today you have the very real opportunity to do something good and useful and meaningful with what you have.

Grab that opportunity, embrace that hopeful feeling. Though it won’t always be easy, step forward and fulfill its best promise.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 13

Ask yourself

You can either find an excuse or you can find a way. Which will it be?

Possibilities emerge from every direction, all the time. Which ones will you focus on and invest yourself in?

From your attitude, your intentions, your choices, and your actions come the results you get. To what specific results are you committed right now?

The world throws obstacles, burdens and disappointments at you on a regular basis. What inner positive purpose do you carry that will compel you to push through all those difficulties.

Ask yourself challenging questions such as this and give yourself truthful answers. With those questions and answers, remind yourself why you do what you do.

Great opportunities await you today, as do menacing pitfalls. Prepare yourself to be your best by asking questions that bring all your strengths to the surface.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 14

Unresolved matters

There will always be unresolved matters in your world. Live your life anyway.

Perhaps it would be nice if you could find an acceptable answer to every question. Of course it would be great to have a detailed plan for every dilemma.

But that’s not going to happen. So don’t put your life on hold just because a few aspects of it are uncertain.

Do your best work to resolve the uncertainty, to find the answers, to formulate a plan. And while you do, go on ahead with all the other parts of your life.

Every day is filled with opportunities for rich experience and satisfying fulfillment. Don’t let those opportunities pass you by just because a few issues are pending.

Your life’s journey will always have some uncertainty. Even so, you have plenty of joy, meaning and fulfillment waiting to be found at every step along the way.

— Ralph Marston