Daily Motivator - May
 

May 1

The path that is best

Do not wish for life to be easy. Work for life to be good, thankful for every chance to make a difference.

Do not choose a path because it is easiest. Choose the path that is best, where you can create the most real value.

When things are too easy for too long you are lulled into complacency. That complacency will eat away at the meaning and substance of your life.

The things that make you feel most vibrantly alive are not the easy things. They are things that require focus, commitment, effort, sacrifice, persistence, things that matter.

What if you could be thankful that life is not easy? What if you could just do the difficult work, bear the heavy burdens, with gratitude, cheerfulness and enthusiasm?

In fact, you can. And when you do, you’ll make life even richer and more fulfilling than you can imagine.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 2

Peaceful space

It is okay to be bored sometimes, good and useful even. You do not need to cram every minute of every day with impressive, stimulating activity.

Occasionally the best stimulation is no stimulation. On a regular basis, you must allow time and space for life to sink in.

You cannot make meaning of anything when everything is coming at you nonstop. True richness comes not from a random stream of sensations, but from aligning your experiences with a coherent purpose.

Just because a topic is trending doesn’t mean it will add anything of value to your life. Don’t let your fear of missing out on the latest buzz cause you to miss out on what really matters.

Choose to spend some time away from the endless onslaught of sounds, images, information, drama, opinions. Give yourself a peaceful space to think, to feel, to wonder, to catch your breath.

Let go of the exhausting need to be constantly entertained and up-to-the-minute on everything. With what you know, with who you are, devote yourself to living life, richly, and deeply.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 3

Highly effective

You are highly effective when you choose to be. Today, choose to be.

You are unstoppable when you know your efforts will make a meaningful difference. Today, keep yourself, your thoughts, your actions focused on what matters.

Life can wear you down, drain your hope, make you cynical and dejected. Yet you can quickly rise above all that when you decide to deploy yourself on a positive mission.

Your skills, knowledge, passion and experience are too valuable to waste. Life is pleading with you today to make a positive difference.

So go ahead, answer the call. Instead of blaming, complaining or sinking into despair, take action right now, where you are, with what you have, to make things better.

Feel the great satisfaction of putting your effectiveness to use to benefit your world. You can do anything when it matters enough, and today, it matters.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 4

Find the good in what happens

What feels like a setback does not have to be a setback. It can be an opportunity to find a better way.

It’s easy to be thankful for all the things that go your way. Yet there’s even more power in being thankful when things don’t go your way.

You can find the good in what happens, whatever may happen. You can find a positive way forward from even the most difficult situations.

Everything is an opportunity when you decide to make it an opportunity. Just saying that doesn’t make it so, yet your actions and your attitude can make it so.

Even from the lowest point in the dark valley, there’s a path leading to the sunlit mountain peak. No matter where you are or what has happened, your next step can be a positive one.

Feel your faith, feel your courage, feel your strength and resilience, and take that positive step. You have much goodness to give, to live.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 5

Your remarkable potential

Don’t let negativity win the moment. Don’t let negativity win the day.

Life is too valuable to spend it in despair, destruction, deception. The positive possibilities are too important to let them languish unrealized.

Recommit yourself right now to all you love, all you care so much about. Choose to focus your actions, your energy, on furthering life’s goodness.

The superficial, sparkling trinkets of depravity and indolence can be enticing. Yet they are heartbreakingly empty, and have no place in your beautiful life.

You are destined for, capable, and worthy of so much more. You have value, substance, beauty, meaning to create, and dreams to bring to life.

Challenge yourself to live up to your remarkable potential, every day. Your life is worth every good thing you work to put into it.

-Ralph S. Marston

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

May 7

Critical juncture

Just because you've developed a destructive habit, doesn't mean that habit has to continue. Just because you've avoided certain responsibilities, doesn't mean you have to keep avoiding them.

Life is dynamic, with endless changes possible, and its dynamic nature is focused on right now. Because right now is when you can make those changes and put your life into a new, improved trajectory.

Today is the day that separates the past from the future, and it is a critical juncture. Today is when you can continue what works, discard what is not working, and replace it with a new approach.

In the short term, it's comfortable to stay where you are, to continue doing what you've always done. But if you don't shake things up every so often, that comfort can turn into regret.

You are amazingly adaptable, and today you can put that skill to use. You can take this opportunity to upgrade your attitude, your actions, your expectations and your results.

Today, your past is over and you are free to create a future based on your highest standards and most treasured dreams. Today, do what is necessary to make that future the best it can be.

Ralph Marston

Thank you!

May 8

Live with vision

Look clearly at what is and then, look past it. Look, with eyes of wonder and positive expectation, at what can be.

See the world in all its rock solid reality and then, look a little further. Discover what good effort and strong purpose can build from such a reality.

Fall completely in love with life in this moment. Then push that love into the future and make from it a great vision.

Dare to expect the highest and best from yourself. Dare to see the good that has not yet manifest, and dare to make it be.

When others talk of trouble and toil, listen, understand, empathize. Then step forward with a great and shining vision, and make life better for everyone who lives it.

Know that the best is always yet to come. Live with vision, and live to make it happen.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 9

Be on it

Do not seek to run away from the problem, or to wish it away. Do the work to transform it into a blessing.

The moment the problem arises, be on it. Give yourself the advantage of an early and decisive start.

Shed any inclination to feel self-pity or resentment. Feel instead the power, the energy, the positive expectations that flow from focused action.

Wrap your awareness around the opportunity to make a difference. Fill your moments, your actions with gratitude for your chance to improve the situation.

This is not the first problem you’ve had and it won’t be the last. You’ve navigated successfully through past difficulties, and with every new challenge you grow more capable.

Be on it. And be the one to pull positive value and success from the problem.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 10

Let joy be

Don’t let your joys become needs. Set them free and enjoy them even more.

There are activities, people, foods, drinks and experiences you enjoy. Yet if you get to the point where you must have them, where you need them, their joy disappears.

Life has enough chores and burdens. Don’t corrupt and reshape joy into a burden by needing to have it.

Instead, allow joy. Give, encourage, support and enable joy to find a place in your world.

Let joy be, without strife, desperation, needs or conditions. Let joy be, and let joy pull you toward it.

By very definition, anything you need you do not have. Get away from the need for joy, and get on with the living of it.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 11

The way you choose to see life

Even when every person you encounter seems to be thoughtless, rude, inconsiderate, you can still be kind. Even when you feel nothing is going your way, you can still move forward with hope and positive action.

You cannot control much of what unfolds in life. Yet you can control you, how you think, how you feel, what you do, and that is more than enough.

Sure, the quality of your life is affected by outside forces and events. What makes the biggest difference, however, is the way you choose to see life, and to live it.

You can improve your day, powerfully, positively and instantly, by improving your attitude. Whatever is going on, the most successful way to deal with it is from an optimistic, enthusiastic perspective.

In life you’ll encounter a wide range of situations, but you never have to be a victim of circumstance. There is a positive way forward in every moment, and you can always choose it.

For all the drama, noise and angst of this day, there is much good you can do. Decide now, and always, to see it, do it and live it.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 12

Add kindness

When interacting with other people, keep this in mind. They are people, with lives, stories, families, hopes, challenges and feelings.

For your own sake and for the sake of everyone, go out of your way to be considerate. Do all you can do to be kind.

Especially when you’re not met with kindness, offer your own kindness in return. Instead of trying to get the last word, seek to give the first smile.

Kindness does not get used up. In fact, the more it is expressed, the more of it there is, and the world will benefit from all you can give.

You may have every reason to be angry, disappointed, impatient, sarcastic. Yet kindness is almost always the better choice.

If the world seems to harsh, rude, inconsiderate, do something positive about it. Add your own kindness, every opportunity you get.

-Ralph S. Marston

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

May 14

Decide you will

Decide you will, and then do what you decide. Set an intention, direct the power of your focus and skills at it, and make it happen.

You were born to achieve, are equipped to achieve. Deep within is an insatiable itch to make a difference.

Scratch that itch, again and again. Give yourself the satisfaction of achievement, and give the world new value.

Decide you will, and make it your mission. Decide you will, and keep going until you’ve done it.

Watching achievement from afar is not enough. Do yourself the great favor of participating in the process.

Live life the way that fulfills your deepest desires, by using each day to make a positive difference. Decide what that difference will be, and do the work to make it happen.

— Ralph Marston

May 15

Feeling overwhelmed

Do you feel overwhelmed by all that must be done? Let that feeling go right now, and start actually making progress.

Yes, absolutely, there is much to do. But you won’t get any of it done by complaining, bragging, wondering, fretting, worrying about being overwhelmed.

Achievement does not come from feeling overwhelmed. Achievement comes from action.

Two minutes of action accomplishes infinitely more than ninety minutes, or a day, or a month of feeling overwhelmed. Start with just those two minutes and go from there.

Action immediately changes your focus. Action takes you from feeling overwhelmed to being in charge.

You won’t get it perfect and you won’t get it all done right away. What your action will do, is make progress, and that’s a great feeling you can continue as long as you wish.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 16

Decide, and do

Life demands decisions. If you don’t decide, someone, something, some event beyond your control will decide for you.

Decisions can be terribly difficult to make. But not making a decision is much worse.

Even a decision that’s less than ideal gives you the ability to move forward. Even when a decision does not work out well, it keeps you in control and enables you to adjust.

It’s easy and understandable to put off making a decision. It’s much better, though, to decide.

The more decisions you make and follow through on, the better your decisions become. Make the decision, put it into action, learn, adjust, repeat.

You can do great, amazing things when you have a well-defined path to follow. So go ahead, decide, and do.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 17

Make life the best

Progress doesn’t just happen because you wish for it. Progress comes about when you work to create it.

To improve the output, improve the input. To improve what you get, improve what you do.

Make positive, empowering changes to your environment. Stay away from people who drag you down, and get yourself around those who challenge, inspire, motivate, fascinate you.

Raise your expectations of yourself, and of others, then exceed those expectations. Raise your level of engagement, your discipline, your commitment, focus, awareness.

When effort is called for, make extra effort. When something must be done, or can be done, find a way to get it done, then go beyond it.

The beauty in each moment begs you to create new greatness. Answer the call, and invest yourself fully in making life the best you know it can be.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 18

Peaceful presence

Be a peaceful presence in the world. Be a peaceful presence in your own life.

A peaceful presence gives you power without draining your effectiveness. A peaceful presence is purposeful without being obsessive.

Let go of worry and let in acceptance. Let go of anxiety and let in positive effort.

Peacefully transform frustration into energy and inspiration. If anger gets you going let it be peaceful purpose that keeps you moving.

Be at peace with what has happened before, and you can direct all your resources to what will happen next. Rise above the envy, resentment, retribution that would steal your power.

Frame each response, each action with a peaceful presence. Let peace give maximum power to all you do.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 19

Stop and consider

When you feel yourself struggling to get what you don’t really want, stop. And consider what an exquisite miracle you already are.

If you catch yourself complaining that things are not going your way, think for a moment. And see that everything that is, can be put to positive purpose.

If you’re consumed with worrying that you might lose it all, gently and lovingly calm your thoughts. Realize that what truly has value can never be taken away.

When you’re tempted to blame others for all of your troubles, take a step back. And understand that the way to control your own destiny is to take full responsibility for your life.

Before you let fear hold you prisoner, remember this. You can learn from the fear, you can use it to more fully prepare, and you can then move confidently ahead.

Before you allow any person, thought, feeling, event or situation to get you down, take a deep breath and consider. This moment is still unfolding, and you can choose right now to make life better than it has ever been.

-Ralph S. Marston

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

May 21

Make yourself stronger

It doesn’t take much time to become stronger than you are. What it takes is embracing challenge, and making effort, and you can do that.

Improvement is one decision, one action away. The improvement will continue as long as you choose.

No matter how much or how little strength you already have, you can make yourself stronger beginning now. You can become more capable, experienced, resilient, effective, from right where you are, using what you have.

Don’t let yourself fall into the old, tired excuses. Make the commitment to make yourself stronger.

You deserve a life of expanding richness and fulfillment. You owe it to yourself, every day, to build on whatever you already have, to create unique, meaningful value out of each experience.

New strength is yours to build in every moment. Take action, grow stronger, and use your strength to continue adding new goodness to life.

Ralph Marston

May 22

Deal with life

You’ll often be tempted to take the easy way out. Do your future self a big favor, and remember that the easy way is almost never the best way.

Even when you feel like quitting, you have the strength to keep going. Even when the work is difficult and demanding, you can get it done.

Cutting corners now creates even bigger problems later. Being less than honest with yourself or others only magnifies the power of a difficult truth that will eventually be unavoidable.

Success, achievement, fulfillment, and satisfaction are never reached by avoiding life’s demands. Instead, call upon yourself to fully deal with life as it unfolds.

Much of the work of living is not fun or glamorous or convenient. Yet what makes life good at its deepest level is when you rise to the challenges as they appear.

Use your strength, deal with life, and add to its rich and magnificent substance. Make yourself always thankful for the way you’ve lived each moment.

0Ralph S. Marston

May 23

Away from the frenzy

Just because it is possible to live day after day at a blistering pace, doesn’t mean it is preferable. You don’t always have to get more, do more, have more, to live richly.

Fulfillment is about quality and meaning, not simple quantity. Fill your life, but don’t pack it so tightly you can’t breathe.

Effort, industriousness and achievement bring great value to life. Yet quiet, thoughtful times can be just as enriching as busy, productive periods.

There’s no point in having everything if you do not take the time to enjoy anything. Take the time, breathe, savor, give goodness a chance to sink in.

Don’t delay, don’t procrastinate, but don’t make everything into a race. If you miss the green light there will be another, and time before it to catch your breath.

Life is much too magnificent to rush through it. Step away from the frenzy, and truly get ahead.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 24

Choose challenge

If there is no sacrifice, there is no achievement. If there is no pain, discomfort, inconvenience, challenge, there is no progress.

If you can do it by merely pushing a button, without thinking, without investing yourself, it has negligible value. Every day, you have the opportunity to do so much more.

You have the opportunity to reach deep within yourself and pull out unique goodness. It can be messy, frustrating, complicated, and crazy fulfilling.

Stride right up to the challenge. Use your wits, figure out a way to rip a hole in that challenge, step into it, work your way to the other side.

Learn to do what you’ve never done before, to think what you’ve never thought before. Let your fear teach you, and prepare you to do what you fear.

Choose challenge as your path forward. Work through your greatest challenges and they will lead you to your greatest achievements.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 25

Constant improvement

Don’t depend on what you’ve already done to sustain you. Embrace the opportunity to exceed your past achievements.

Give yourself the satisfaction of persistence, of growth, of constant improvement. You’ve done good work, and now you can do even better.

Keep going, keep growing, keep improving, and see yourself go far beyond limits you once thought were impenetrable. Don’t stop, or complacency will quickly catch you.

You’re alive, aware, able, purposeful, so continue to act like it. Your life right now is too full of potential to waste it reliving past glories.

You have more experience, more knowledge, more wisdom than ever before. Just imagine what you can now do with it all.

Whatever the past has been, now can be better. Put your love, joy, purpose, effort, experience and creativity into making it so.

-Ralph S. Marston

May 26

Seamless connection

The moment you have the intention is the moment to start acting on it. Give power, commitment, persistence to your intention by giving it immediate effort.

As soon as you decide to achieve, set that achievement in motion. Prove to yourself you’re serious, and earn yourself some serious momentum, right away.

That moment when you set your intention, your passion is running at full throttle. Your sense of purpose is focused as sharp as a laser beam on the goal.

Make the most of that moment. Use it to lock yourself into action, to empower that action with deep, sustained meaning.

Achievement happens because you make it happen. Avoid delay, avoid regret, jump right into the effort, then keep it going.

Create a seamless connection between the decision and the action. That’s what transforms intention into achievement.

-Ralph S. Marston

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

May 28

New moments

New moments are constantly arriving in your life. The only way to get value from them is to use each one as it comes.

You can transform your time into amazing achievements and experiences. Yet you cannot store up time to use it later, or borrow it from the distant future.

Always, the moment to act is the moment you are in. A wasted hour is a regrettable waste of your life’s potential.

Fortunately, instead of creating regret you can create value. Instead of letting time go unused, you can transform it into every kind of good thing imaginable.

Now is when you are alive and now is when you are able to put your life into useful action. Treasure each new moment, live it accordingly, and with that moment you will create new life treasure.

Enthusiastically embrace each bit of time as it comes. And make full, worthwhile use of it before it goes.

-Ralph Marston

May 29

Where you belong

This is where you are, this is where you belong. And now is when you can make life richer, more fulfilling than ever before.

Shift awareness away from all the superficial trivia and into matters of your heart. Feel the abundance in which you’re already right now immersed.

What your spirit longs for is here for you to claim. In this moment is everything in the universe, and all the goodness that matters to you.

Open yourself lovingly to all you have. Give yourself fully to all you can do, now, here.

Blissfully ignore the howling complaints of ego. You have so many more meaningful things to tend to.

Whatever else you have or not, you have this moment. And within it is every possibility.

— Ralph Marston

May 30

New normal

If you are not completely satisfied with what’s normal in your life, create a new normal. Make a change for the better, and commit to keep that change going.

It’s not enough to merely try something new for a while. Because you’ll always feel like you can easily abandon it.

When you make a positive change, make it a real, authentic, lasting change. Integrate it into who you are and how you live.

Let your investment in self-improvement be more than just a whim. Don’t provide a way to back out.

Driven by your dreams, your desires, your frustrations, experience, wisdom and love, create a new normal. Make it beautiful, make it challenging, make it compelling, and make it stick.

You deserve your own highest level of commitment. Settle for nothing less.

— Ralph Marston

May 31

Give goodness to life

Before you act, before you speak, ask yourself this. Will it accomplish anything positive?

It might feel good in the moment to criticize, and the other person might deserve it. But will your criticism make a positive difference for anyone, or will it just be hurtful?

Your time is precious, as are your relationships and your resources. Invest them in what matters, in what moves life forward.

Just because you have the impulse and the opportunity to do something, doesn’t mean you must do it. Consider first who will benefit, who will suffer, what it will accomplish.

There are plenty of good, productive, helpful, nurturing choices in every moment. You don’t always have to go with the first thing that comes to mind.

Keep your standards high by making sure what you do has a positive impact. Give goodness to life, and life will be good to you.

— Ralph Marston