Daily Motivator - April
 

April 1

Live richly

A lot of people have gone to a lot of trouble over thousands of years, making it possible for you to live this day. Do not take lightly that priceless legacy.

Your situation is not perfect. But it’s a whole lot better than no situation at all.

You sense and feel, think, express, and connect with others. You act to make a difference, and strive to understand and appreciate what matters and what doesn’t.

You’re able to experience and interact with reality on countless levels in endless domains. With each dawning day, the possibilities for richness and fulfillment grow more numerous.

Invite some specific form of that richness into your life, live it with zesty gratitude, again and again. Share it with others and work to expand it in ways that are helpful and enlightening.

Embrace the opportunities and put your best effort into fulfilling what’s possible. Live richly the life that is yours, the time that is here.

— Ralph Marston

Happy New Month family always
Thanking God for getting us though the month
Of March sober happy and free.

Three awesome prayers to start your week off.

He is
Risen Hallelujah.

Risen Christ, thank You for the power of the resurrection. You have made real for all your children. My darkness is turned into light and the rough places are made level. Open my eyes to the truth of Your word. I recognize You as my living Savior. Because you live, I too shall live. What joy! Hallelujah! Amen.

A Prayer to Know God’s Presence.

God, continue to be the focus of my daily life. Make Your presence known to me. Draw me close to You so that way I can know You more deeply. I want to seek You all the days of my life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I prayer of Thanks.

Father God, thank you for caring about every detail of my life. Forgive me for spending so much mental energy worrying about circumstances I can’t control. I give each pressing situation to you. Please work in miraculous ways. Thank you that I can trade my anxieties for your peace. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

April 2

It pays to care

It pays to care about life, about others, about meaning. It pays to care about time and effectiveness and achievement.

It pays to care about truth. It pays to care about what’s good, and what contributes to life.

To the extent you care, you get involved and make a difference. When you care, that caring drives your priorities, your actions, your results.

Caring is more than just feeling or saying you care. To care means to act on what you care about.

Do that, and life resounds with purpose. Do that, and fulfillment, deep satisfaction, and enrichment all come your way.

Go to the trouble, make the commitment, to care, in matters small and large. It’s an essential part of how life is well lived.

— Ralph Marston

April 3

Add beauty

Beauty is more than just something nice to look at. Beauty uplifts life in multiple dimensions.

Experiencing beauty connects you with higher possibilities and aspirations. Creating, maintaining and expanding something beautiful will challenge you to put your best abilities into action.

Beauty serves as a physical manifestation of time well spent in meaningful and intentional focus. Beauty expresses love for life in ways that cannot be rendered by any other activity.

Beauty can seem to be optional and even frivolous. But life without any potential for beauty would be a dreary, dismal existence that would quickly drain your energy.

Fortunately, you can find and produce true beauty in all sorts of different times and settings and modes. Beauty requires commitment in order to experience, to appreciate, to bring into existence, yet it is always within reach.

Never pass up the opportunity to add beauty to your experience of life. It’s always worth your time and effort.

— Ralph Marston

April 4

Abundance and richness

A simple joy offers far greater nourishment to your soul than a sophisticated spectacle does. What’s modest and genuine brings you more richness than anything that’s brash and contrived.

Emptiness in life cannot be filled by the equally empty promises of others, or by pre-packaged experiences that have no enduring substance. Emptiness is best filled with your commitment, effort, care, love, and generosity.

What’s fulfilling is not easy, and what’s easy is not fulfilling. That’s abundantly clear from the history of the world and the story of your own life.

Keep reminding yourself not to fall for the deceptions of ease, extravagance, and self-indulgence. You deserve so much more from your own priorities and actions.

Whatever you seek to gain from your experience of life, consider how to offer it in similar form and measure. Participate deeply and persistently in what matters, in what makes a positive difference.

Find abundance and richness in all that is true, and real, and good. Refuse to compromise your time and your life with anything else.

— Ralph Marston

April 5

Freedom to live richly

Give yourself freedom from worries of what others might think or say about you. Offer yourself freedom from the limitations your doubts have imposed upon you.

Choose to escape from the misguided assumption that focused effort is something to be avoided. Discard a few of the comfortable yet negative habits that waste so much precious time.

There are plenty of great things you can do right here and now. Allow yourself freedom to experience the joy of creating new goodness as you live each moment.

Consider all the positive possibilities open to you today. Free yourself to explore and fulfill the best of them.

Let go of the need to be troubled by troubles. Accept what is, then allow and encourage yourself to make the very best of it.

Now is when you can free yourself from whatever may have held you back before. Here is your day to live richly, with all the spirit and energy you can muster.

— Ralph Marston

April 6

Strengthen your patience

Listen with patience, and you’ll understand much more. Work with patience, and you’re able to create lasting value.

Offer your life and your world the power that comes as a result of patience. Express genuine love and care, through your patience.

With patience, you are able to avoid careless mistakes. In a state of patience, you can feel anxiety melting away.

Patience gives you genuine and meaningful refuge from the frustrations you encounter in the world. Patience builds in you a character that’s strong, resilient, and enduring.

With persistence, you’re able to achieve almost any meaningful objective. And patience is a crucial element of persistence.

Today you’ll encounter many opportunities to give benefit to your life and your world with patience. Every time you exercise and strengthen your patience, you greatly expand the positive possibilities available to you.

— Ralph Marston

April 7

Forgotten options

You have good options that you’re not exercising. How do you put yourself in a place where you can see them?

Most of the time those options remain hidden behind your assumptions and habitual routines. It’s helpful to occasionally take a break from those routines, to question those assumptions.

Imagine another person looking at your life from a radically different perspective. What would that person see?

What resources, connections, opportunities, and skills would that person observe? What bodies of knowledge, what interests, what values would that person be able to detect?

In your life you’ve made lots of choices, and once you choose a particular option you tend to forget about all the others. But many of those options are still available to you and might be more attractive now.

Get a little curious about the options you’ve forgotten or never even realized you had. You might even find some that can change your life.

— Ralph Marston

April 8

Energy of richness

Stop fretting about getting it done. Just get it done.

Don’t complain about what has gone wrong. Just take all the necessary steps to make things right.

Let go of the worry and the drama. Allow the focus, the discipline, the effort, persistence, and effectiveness.

From moment to moment, it’s your decision where to direct your energy. Put that energy where it will bring new richness to your world.

Live on your own terms and make those terms positive and purposeful. See yourself not as struggling against what has been but as fulfilling the best of what can be.

Live on the highest level you can envision. And cheerfully encourage everyone else to come along.

— Ralph Marston

April 9

Responsibility is essential

Responsibility enriches life. Accept responsibility, and insist on it from others.

The constraints imposed by responsibility can indeed be burdensome. But responsibility is not a form of oppression or punishment.

Responsibility is an acknowledgement, acceptance, and embrace of the reality that every choice has consequences. Responsibility is essential to true empowerment.

It is not an act of compassion or kindness to give anyone a way to avoid responsibility. The compassionate thing is to assist and encourage others as they participate in the fulfillment of their responsibilities.

You do not benefit your own life by avoiding or escaping responsibility. For in every responsibility is the opportunity to grow stronger, more experienced, more effective and purposeful.

See responsibility for the good and essential part of life that it is. Be eager to take on meaningful responsibilities, and diligent in following through on them.

— Ralph Marston

April 10

Create goodness

You can’t solve all the problems of the world. What you can do is create goodness right where you are.

Create goodness in the way you live, with the people you encounter. Create goodness with the problems you solve, with your kindness, with your positive presence.

As entertaining as it might be to fantasize about, the world doesn’t really need a dramatic superhero. Life always has, and will continue to benefit from good people living good lives of purpose and integrity.

A small kindness has the capacity to reverberate endlessly through life. And there’s always some small kindness you can offer.

Beyond that, you can have the audacity to be happy every now and then, to enjoy life, to share the joy. You can delight in the beauty, wonder, mystery, and challenge of the universe in which you exist.

Life’s enduring goodness is made in the countless ordinary moments, not in some grandiose scheme. Make some more of that goodness right now.

— Ralph Marston

April 11

Rise to the occasion

Rise to the occasion of your challenges. Rise to the occasion of your opportunities.

Face the reality of the situation you’re in, with grace, with purpose, with courage. Create value, fulfillment, and worthwhile experience as the moments pass.

Take an active role and make a positive difference in the unfolding of life. There’s good you can do today, right here, right now.

Make the effort, go to the trouble, learn from what works well and what doesn’t. Speak the truth, endeavor to better understand, and offer kindness whenever you can.

Choose today what you’ll continue tomorrow to be thankful for choosing. Do what adds enduring richness, not merely what creates momentary satisfaction.

Respect and value the miracle that is your life, that is all of life. Rise to the occasion, and give to it your best.

— Ralph Marston

April 12

Real and present

Now is when you live your life. Now is when you get work done.

Here is where you address the problems. This is the place from which you follow your dreams and achieve your objectives.

These are the circumstances you must contend with. This is the situation in which you operate.

You might have imagined and wished for a more ideal environment. Yet here is where you are, now is the time you have.

Instead of waiting for someday, make full use of this day. Rather than wishing for a perfect scenario, figure out what to do with the real and present one you have.

You’re entirely capable of moving forward from wherever you happen to be. You happen to be just where you are, so pick yourself up, focus on your purpose, and get going.

— Ralph Marston

April 13

Opportunity to learn

The most valuable lessons are not what anyone else seeks to teach you. They are the lessons you learn for yourself.

How do you learn those lessons? You learn by doing, by living, by experiencing.

You learn by making mistakes, then enjoying some progress, then making bigger mistakes, followed by a little more progress. You learn by observing and contemplating, by putting yourself on the line and accepting the consequences of your actions.

You learn by experimenting, by adjusting and adapting. You learn from paying close attention to what works and why.

Even when you have no intention to learn anything, there’s something to be learned. Ask honest questions, listen with care and respect, and learn.

With what you learn you can make real improvements to your life, your work, your world. And every moment, in any situation, you have the opportunity to learn.

— Ralph Marston

April 14

Life changes

By very definition, life does not stand still. Whatever you’re not working to improve, time and circumstance are busy eroding.

You are in some ways different today than you were yesterday. Tomorrow you’ll be a little different than today.

You will change, the world around you will change, and there’s no getting away from that. What you can do is embrace the changes and do your best to push them in a positive direction.

That’s one reason gratitude is so beneficial to your life. Gratitude shines a bright light on what’s valuable and enables you to build upon that value.

Changes can be painful and frightening, yet they also open up new opportunities. Instead of wishing in vain that the changes would stop, look for how you and others can work to benefit from those inevitable changes.

Life changes, and with each change comes some positive potential. Choose to make the most of that potential, and do what you can to change life for the better.

— Ralph Marston