Daily Motivator - March

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March 1

Room for improvement

When you start something new, you’re not going to do it very well at first. Don’t let that stop you.

Give yourself permission to do it poorly at first. Give yourself the opportunity to learn through experience how to do it better.

Don’t be embarrassed about how inexperienced you are. Instead, be enthusiastic about how much progress you can make.

Gain strength by acknowledging your weakness. Grow in knowledge and experience by admitting what you don’t know.

When starting anything new, you have the great advantage of being able to look at it from a fresh, uncorrupted perspective. You don’t know all there is to know, and that enables you to see opportunities that more experienced practitioners have overlooked.

Go ahead, jump in, do your best even if your best is not so great at first. You have lots of room for improvement, and as you continue, improvement is exactly what you’ll get.

— Ralph Marston

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March 2

Make something good

Sometimes you can’t do much about what happens, but here’s what you can always do. You can make something good out of it.

You cannot prevent the tragedy, the injustice, the heartache that’s already gone down. Yet you can work to make something good from it.

You can smile, look forward, hold your head up high. You can choose to be a positive influence in each moment that you have the good fortune to occupy.

Driven by your intention to do so, you can make something good out of it. With gratitude, responsibility, compassion and love, you can give life a more positive version of itself.

You don’t have to complain or regret or blame or seethe in anger. You can stand up, step forward, with enthusiasm, with good cheer, and make something good of it.

From the good, the bad, the ugly, the sad, the joyous, the uncertain, choose to respond in a positive, life-affirming way. See what’s possible, do what you can do, and make something good.

— Ralph Marston

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March 3

Respond with love

Let love be your first response, for your sake, and for everyone’s sake. Advance goodness in the world, not pain or outrage.

Love always has a place. Love frees you from the burdens of judgment, retribution, and the downward spirals they engender.

When love is your first response, you won’t waste energy on anger, blame, or conflict. Love can soothe the stress of the situation and melt away anxiety.

No matter where others are coming from, you can operate from a perspective of love. Seek to act from genuine love, and you’ll uncover the most beneficial options.

Love will not magically solve all the problems. Love will challenge you to work on truly making the situation better without creating new problems.

Let love be your first response. And give yourself an advantage that’s in everyone’s best interest.

— Ralph Marston

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March 4

Transform trouble into triumph

Maybe you can quickly improve a difficult situation, but it’s more likely to take some time. What you can always do immediately, though, is improve your own perspective.

Yes, you’re facing a difficult challenge. Remind yourself that the best way to do so is within the overall context of a positive and empowered outlook.

It’s all too easy to wildly extrapolate your troubles, to assume everything is wrong with the very fabric of existence. Although that attitude is appealing because it relieves you of responsibility, it also makes problems much worse than they have to be.

There’s a better way, and you already know it. You know it because you’ve experienced your own effectiveness, your own ability to persevere, and even to grow stronger, in the face of challenge.

Take a step back from the urge to feel dismayed and sorry for yourself. Decide instead to be inspired, to see opportunity in the challenge, to act with courage in the direction of that opportunity.

Accept the difficulty for what it is, letting it inspire and energize your own most positive perspective in response. Hold on to that perspective, act on it, and enable yourself to transform trouble into triumph.

— Ralph Marston

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March 5

Welcome the consequences

Ask yourself, what can you do today that will improve the consequences you experience tomorrow? How can you make the inevitable consequences turn out in your favor?

For all you do, for all you think, for all you choose, there are consequences. The consequences may come soon, or much later, you might recognize them, or you might not, yet they will always come.

For every action there is a reaction, for every cause a result. Live as though there will be consequences, because there will be.

You cannot avoid consequences. What you can do, however, is to bring about the most desirable consequences as a result of the choices you make.

Gratefully embrace the fact that there are consequences. Consequences enable you to change reality, and you can choose to make those changes valuable, beneficial ones.

When you act in this moment, you act on behalf of all the days and years to come. Act so that when the consequences do arrive, you’ll be delighted to welcome them with open arms.

— Ralph Marston

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March 6

Let it be enough

Let it be enough to love this day and its possibilities. Let it be enough to do with it all the best you can do.

Let it be enough to be in awe of the wonders of existence, without having to understand or control every detail. Let it be enough to be who you truly are, to be here, to be thankful for the experience of now.

Make good plans for days to come, and put those plans into action. Treasure the richness of your past, and carry the joy of that richness ever forward with you.

But don’t let the longing for other times and circumstances detract from the good life you can live right now. Let it be enough to be in this unique situation, and let yourself give it the good energy you have.

Let it be enough to taste what’s on your plate, without craving more. Let it be enough to enjoy those you’re with, free of the need to impress, free of any wish to be somewhere else.

Life is beautiful and rich with potential in every grain of being. Feel the depth and breadth of that richness, and let it be enough.

— Ralph Marston

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March 7

Past the doubts

Let your doubts alert you, then let them go. Don’t let them linger.

Ask yourself what you must learn, do, or change in order to let the doubt go. Then make that happen, and get past the doubt.

Your doubts challenge your decisions. The purpose of those doubts is not to stop you from making decisions or from acting on them, but to strengthen your decisions and actions.

Life can be dangerous, and you’re smart to be wary. Yet the best way to deal with the danger is not to retreat from it, but to find a way to act and to thrive in the face of it.

Take up the challenge that your doubts offer. Respond to your doubts by preparing, improving, strengthening yourself and your plan of action.

Then go ahead and take that action. Let your doubts tell you how to get past them, then do what they say and leave those doubts far behind.

— Ralph Marston

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March 8

Worth your effort

Misfortune is bad enough on its own. Don’t let it become an excuse for you to be less than your best.

Life is difficult enough already. Don’t make it ten times more difficult by getting aggravated at the difficulties.

Instead, see each difficulty as a reason to raise your expectations. As long as you have to deal with the difficulty, you definitely want to make it well worth your effort.

Sure, misfortune can serve as a perfectly reasonable and understandable excuse to sit back and do nothing for a while. Yet it can just as reasonably be the fire that ignites your passion and pushes you up into a higher level of achievement.

When you’ve experienced misfortune, you’ve already paid a costly price. Choose to get something good and valuable for the price you’ve paid.

Misfortune can motivate you in a way that nothing else can. Tap into that energy and call upon it to propel you in a positive direction of your choosing.

— Ralph Marston

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March 9

Live your worthiness

Be good to yourself. And live in such a way that you can justify that goodness.

Take the time and the care to treat yourself well. And let it motivate you to be deserving of that good treatment.

Your actions and thoughts help to build and to make sense of the world. Work each day to bring the world you actually inhabit a little closer to the ideal world for which you long.

What you do right now matters very much. Let that be both a source of continuing joy and a persistent, driving challenge to give your best.

Be a positive influence on yourself so that you’re enabled and inspired to be a positive influence on life. Be genuinely valuable to yourself, in deed and thought, and you’ll have great value to offer those around you.

It helps no one for you to be thoughtless or negligent, or worse, toward yourself. Embrace and live your worthiness, and generously extend that worthiness to all of life.

— Ralph Marston

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March 10

Your intention

Achieve by taking action when it is necessary, not just when it is convenient. Forge new value from the situation as it is, not by waiting until circumstances are ideal.

Create not just when the mood strikes you, but on a regular, consistent schedule. Get into a creative, productive state with your own efforts, not by yearning for perfect conditions.

The distractions are too powerful and widespread already. Don’t add to their distracting, destructive power by being flimsy or equivocal with your intentions.

Decide what you will do, and stick to your decision. Remain aware of and informed by what’s going on, but refuse to be knocked off track by the turbulence around you.

You can’t control weather, politics, markets, culture, traffic, and such. Still, you can decide precisely what you will achieve each day and then do the work to make it happen.

You have great things to do. Don’t let a little discomfort, inconvenience, or distraction stand in your way.

— Ralph Marston

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March 11

Achievement happens

Every great thing that’s ever been done has been achieved by people who were less than perfect. Everyone has flaws of some sort, and yet people continue to make good things happen all the time in countless ways.

All the value that’s ever been created has come about in circumstances that were far from ideal. With limited time, with inadequate resources, in the face of complex challenges, achievement happens nonetheless.

Achievement happens when someone decides to make it happen regardless of what the situation may be. Achievement happens when someone stops criticizing the opportunities and starts acting on them.

The path to failure is broad and easy while the path to achievement is narrow and much more difficult to follow. Yet achievement happens all the time because people just like you choose to make it happen.

What would you attempt to achieve if your skills were perfect, if conditions were ideal, if resources were plentiful? Whatever it is, if you wait for all those things to line up perfectly, the opportunity will fade away.

Achievement happens not because of what you start with, but because of what you’re willing to put into it. Be willing to do what you must with what you have, in the face of imperfection, and achievement will happen for you.

— Ralph Marston

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March 12

This, too, will pass

One setback is not the end of the world. Even a series of disappointments is not the end of the world.

Because life by its very nature is dynamic, and things change. The worse the situation becomes, the more desire and incentive everyone has to make it better.

That series of disappointments, as ominous and pervasive as it may be, will not extend in a straight line to infinity. At some point there will be pushback, there will be improvement, there will be a turnaround.

Certainly it is useful to anticipate difficulties so you can head them off early. But it’s also important to remind yourself that this, too, will pass.

Don’t give up on everything just because of a little problem, or a big problem, or a whole string of problems. Instead, keep moving forward as best you can.

This, too, will pass. And when it does, you can be thankful you continued to invest yourself in a positive future.

— Ralph Marston

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March 13

Ability and effort

Ability is powerful, yet it is of no value without effort. What matters even more than having the ability is putting it into action.

Don’t let the confidence in your ability to achieve, take the place of achievement itself. Put your skills to work, put your abilities into action, because that’s what they’re for.

It’s tempting to gather a collection of impressive abilities and to congratulate yourself for simply having them. But that’s also very empty, and ultimately unfulfilling.

It’s a good feeling to know that you can do something worthwhile. And you know from experience that it’s an even better feeling to actually do it.

Resist the urge to sit smugly on your abilities. Take those abilities out into the world where they can be challenged to grow stronger, where they can be put to good use.

There are a lot of good things you can do. Now, go do them.

— Ralph Marston

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March 14

Your instincts

Pay attention to your instincts. Just because they are not rational does not mean they are uninformed.

There is much your senses have captured that you never consciously realized. There is much you have known that you do not currently recall.

Your instincts are informed by the rich sensory details of your experiences and the memories hidden in your subconscious. Your instincts draw upon truths that are not limited by reason or logic.

Your instincts can make connections that you are afraid to make or embarrassed to make, or just too stubborn to make. No, they are not magically perfect, but neither are your instincts crazy.

When you feel something is wrong, though you have no explicit evidence for it to be, give weight to that feeling. Don’t be so impressed with your own intelligence that you ignore what you can’t explain.

Tap into the dimension of your intelligence that exists beyond fact and reason. Give serious consideration to your instincts, for they know you and your world very well.

— Ralph Marston

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March 15

Meaningful purpose

What meaningful purpose have you given yourself today? What mission have you set yourself upon?

There is something that’s not as good as it could be in your world, that you can make better. There is some positive possibility that intrigues you, that you can begin to fulfill.

At the end of this day, do you want to feel encouraged about it, about yourself, about the future? If so, devote your time and efforts to a meaningful purpose.

The reason for doing so is not to impress anyone with how compassionate or effective you can be. The reason is to inspire your own sincere offering of real value to life.

Don’t let yourself be reduced to a state of numbness by all the world’s emptiness you see on display. Fill the void with positive purpose that motivates you into action.

You can make a substantive difference today, and it will mean the world to you, and to the world. Devote your day to a meaningful purpose, and relish the opportunity to bring it to life.

— Ralph Marston

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March 16

Other direction

What can you do when someone violates your trust? Use it as an incentive to lift your own standards even higher than they already are.

How do you react when life disappoints you? Make up for the disappointment by raising your expectations and boosting your enthusiasm for moving forward.

When your world turns negative, the last thing you want to do is add to that negativity. Instead, go firmly in the other direction.

If you find yourself shocked by how bad the situation is, absorb the energy of that shock. Let that energy fuel your inspiration and your action.

Get yourself in the habit of beneficial transformation. When you encounter something bad, respond by doing something good.

You always have a choice, and this is one of the best you’ll ever make. Choose to always let the worst bring out your best.

— Ralph Marston

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March 17

Peak performance

You have a lot of difficult things to deal with. That’s no excuse to do less than your best.

In fact, it’s a reason to up your game. It’s an opportunity to boost your effectiveness, your knowledge, your energy level.

You could easily and justifiably gain the sympathy of others, and of yourself. But as you already know through long years of experience, that won’t do you any good.

What will help immensely is to operate at peak performance regardless of the situation. Things are tough, life is unfair, and yet you can be better than you’ve ever been.

The energy required to articulate your excuses could be better used to tackle your challenges. Plus, in addition to making real progress, you’ll feel a whole lot better about yourself.

Grab the difficulties, pull inspiration and determination out of them. Move forward, more purposeful and effective than ever before.

— Ralph Marston

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March 18

Use your strength

You are strong. Use that strength.

You don’t have to be imprisoned by idleness. You don’t have to be immobilized by excuses.

You’re strong enough to get past the harmful temptations. You’re strong enough to get up, get going, and get good work done.

You have the strength to press forward in the face of difficulty and discouragement. You have the strength to persist in your efforts for as long as necessary.

Very soon, you will be very thankful for making use of your strength today, now when you have the chance. And you’ll be even stronger for having done so.

Rather than allowing your strength to sit idle and wither, make use of it. Put your strength to good purpose, and push your world in a positive direction.

— Ralph Marston

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March 19

Thankful to live

Teach yourself to love the effort. Train yourself to delight in the challenge.

Asking will get you a few things. Action will get you much more.

Discipline yourself to keep on going when the past results have let you down. Remind yourself how much better life is when you’re fully engaged in being of use.

Caution yourself against cutting too many corners. Enjoy yourself as you work to do a good job with whatever must be done.

Seek the satisfaction of knowing you’re making a difference. Experience the sense of fulfillment that grows with every step you take along the way.

Live each day as an opportunity to give the best you have. And live the kind of life you can truly be thankful to live.

— Ralph Marston

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March 20

Mere intentions

It’s fine to have good intentions. But good intentions are just a very tiny start.

It’s useful to point out the problems. Yet for those problems to be solved, you’ll have to make many difficult choices and do a lot of grinding, tedious work.

Anyone can give a rousing speech about what must be done. Those people who actually move life forward are the ones who make the sacrifices, who jump in and get their hands dirty actually doing it.

Life is overflowing with great possibilities, and yet every good thing comes with a very real price. Every person who promises something for nothing is just leading you down a path to despair.

Go ahead and dream your biggest, most magnificent dreams. Then take full ownership and responsibility for them, and commit yourself to doing all the hard work necessary to bring them into being.

You deserve much, much more than mere intentions. You deserve the great, irreplaceable joy of working to make them happen.

— Ralph Marston

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March 21

Better and better

Each new day is an opportunity to up your game. Each new situation puts you in position to be more thorough and effective at whatever you’re doing.

If you’re not constantly making improvements, you’ll quickly fall behind. It is not a curse, not a burden, but rather a chance for you to become a better and better version of yourself.

Incremental improvement makes the passing of time into your friend. And there’s always a way to make some kind of incremental improvement.

Walk a little more briskly, listen a little more attentively. Be a little more patient and forgiving, focus a little more intently, care a little more deeply than before.

In every area of your life are constant opportunities for improvement. Little by little, without being overwhelmed, you can gently and enthusiastically make those improvements.

Don’t leave yourself struggling to catch up. Instead, make the choice in every moment to get a little bit further ahead.

— Ralph Marston

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March 22

Diversity of opinion

You can learn much more from someone who disagrees with you than you can from someone with whom you agree. Give yourself the courage and intelligence to do so.

Viewpoints different from your own will not harm you. They mostly have great potential to enlighten you.

Why wouldn’t you want to know in detail how other people feel, what others are thinking? There’s no good reason to wall yourself off from the great diversity of opinion that exists in the world.

Your own opinions become more refined, more useful, more aligned to reality when they are challenged. There is much power in giving consideration to things you’ve never before considered.

No two people have exactly the same perspective. That dynamic gives incalculable richness to the experience of life.

Rather than making assumptions about those you disagree with, seek to make connections. Rather than battling over divisiveness, reap great benefits from the diversity of opinion available to you.

— Ralph Marston

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March 23

Truth solves problems

Truth solves problems. When you can be completely honest about the problem, you’re in position to fix it.

Too often it is easier to deny the problem than to do something about it. But that allows the problem to become more costly, more solidly entrenched, and much more difficult to solve.

In such cases, the truth is quite painful. Yet the more painful the truth, the more powerful it is, and the more necessary it is for you to acknowledge.

To solve a difficult problem, face that problem with an unyielding commitment to the truth. Summon the courage and the deep compassion to be truthful, with yourself, with everyone else.

Truth hurts at first. Then it has great power to heal, to make things right, to transform drama and dysfunction into effectiveness and cooperation.

Shine the brilliant light of truth on the problem. You’ll enable everyone to see clearly what must be done, and to do it.

— Ralph Marston

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March 24

Continue forward

The original path you envisioned may have been blocked. Yet the goal still beckons, and it’s still accessible, because somewhere, somehow, there’s a more realistic, more effective way.

You haven’t been knocked off track. You’ve been challenged to find that better way.

Stay committed to where you intend to go, while being open to all the many ways of getting there. Be flexible enough to keep moving forward no matter what.

If you’re prevented from taking a big step right now, take a small step. If your original strategy doesn’t work, be thankful you don’t have to spend any more effort on it, and fashion a new strategy.

All the while, stay focused on the goal, on the destination. Identify yourself, your efforts, your energy, with that goal, rather than with any specific path.

The obstacle in your path does not have to block your progress. Decide instead to make it an opportunity, to learn, to improve, to adjust, and continue forward, more effective than ever.

— Ralph Marston

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March 25

Where your possibilities lead

Don’t let yourself be limited to just what you already know you can do. Let yourself be inspired, motivated, challenged to do all the great things you’re able to imagine yourself doing.

If there’s something new you must learn, learn it. If there’s some resource you must have, find it and figure out how to get access to it.

Be an active participant in your own growth, your own learning, your own progress. Every yearning you feel is an opportunity to make yourself into the person who can fulfill that yearning.

It’s easy to dismiss your ambitions, your dreams, to make excuses for why you’re not following them. Yet you have those dreams for a reason, and the reason is to push you out of your comfort zone and into life’s best possibilities.

No matter how much you’ve done, you’re capable of much more. Let go of your doubts and hesitations, and remind yourself that you’re able to do whatever must be done.

Experience how good it feels to be enthusiastic about what you can do. Get to work and discover the great places where your possibilities lead.

— Ralph Marston

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March 26

Invest in healing

Casting yourself as a victim is a waste of your time and energy. Whether a minor inconvenience appears or a major difficulty arises, you have a much more powerful option.

Even when you truly are a victim, seeing yourself as such, treating yourself as such, will not improve your situation. What will improve the situation is to take full responsibility for doing something about it.

Make it your job to actually make things better. The smallest positive action is infinitely more effective than any amount of self-pity.

Acknowledge the tragedy, the unfairness, the carelessness, the injustice, but don’t make it worse by wallowing in it. No matter who or what is to blame for what happened, you can choose to be responsible for moving positively forward from it.

You cannot always avoid being hurt. But you never have to continue investing yourself in that hurt.

Decide instead to invest yourself in healing, in progress, in love and care and meaningful living. When life turns bad, for you or anyone else, let your response always be to make it better.

— Ralph Marston

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March 27

Give yourself a little joy

Tend to the important things, the serious matters, the consequential tasks. But don’t neglect yourself in the process.

In order to be a positive influence, you have to come from a positive place. Give yourself the time, the care, the space to maintain that positive presence.

It’s tempting to put off the simple enjoyment of life until all the problems are solved. But though you can make much progress, the problems will never all be solved.

Give quality time and attention to your own life, not later, but now. Make yourself able to be there for others by being good to yourself.

Though the demands are high and your resources are limited, there are plenty of ways to take good care of yourself. Refuse to use anything as an excuse for neglecting nutrition, exercise, family, friends, and enjoyable moments.

Remember to give yourself a little joy today, and every day. It will help renew your supply of energy to continue making a positive difference in life.

— Ralph Marston

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March 28

Unnecessary stress

Want to make something more stressful than it already is? Wait until the last minute to do it.

Want to reduce your stress and increase your effectiveness? Do the job long before it must be done.

Things are often not as hard as you imagine them to be, once you finally get to work. But you can make them much more difficult by procrastination.

When an unpleasant task awaits you, the stress associated with it builds over time. The longer you put it off, the more you add to that stress.

What will quickly dissipate the stress is to take control of the situation. Take control by taking action and getting the work finished.

Get out ahead of your obligations, working to put each one behind you as soon as you can. And save yourself from a whole lot of unnecessary stress.

— Ralph Marston

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March 29

The value of hope

Hope does not come with a guarantee. It comes with something much more powerful and enriching to life, which is challenge.

Hope is yours to choose, at any time, in any situation. Yet the value of hope is not in acquiring it, but in rising to its challenge.

Set hope before yourself where it can constantly pull you forward. Let the power of its positive, compelling challenge surge through every part of your being.

Speak with hope, act with hope, live with hope, but don’t expect hope to do the work. That’s your job, as indeed it must be.

For the real value of hope is not in what it gives you, but in what it compels you to give. Hope is a challenge you cannot turn away from, a challenge to be your best.

Dare to look forward with great hope. Then step up and work through the rewarding challenge that hope so graciously provides.

— Ralph Marston

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March 30

Beyond you

Let go of the empty thoughts that revolve only around yourself. Let in a sense of pure wonder and awe for the whole of existence.

Don’t let your small ego deprive you of connection to the massive splendor in which you’re immersed. Choose the power of a perspective that encompasses all that is, and all that ever has been.

There is so very much substance, energy, knowledge, beauty, goodness, and wisdom in the vast realm that exists beyond your own limited concerns. Keep yourself open to all that abundance, to all its possibilities.

Look up at the night sky, and realize that some of the light just now reaching your eyes has traveled for thousands of years to get to you. Feel the vastness that is impossible to fully grasp.

Give yourself a perspective that enables you to quickly transcend all the petty, meaningless noise. Inspire yourself with a sense of wonder and awe that directs your energy toward those things that matter most.

By realizing how small you are compared to all that is, you can understand what a tremendous opportunity it is to be alive in every moment. Over and over again, you can create real goodness and value from that opportunity.

— Ralph Marston

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March 31

Success is when you take action

The foolproof way to convince people you’ll do something is to do it. Promises can be broken, delayed, amended, but actions and results cannot be denied.

The best way to sell yourself is to be yourself, without pretense, with sincerity and enthusiasm, with action. Your actions are far more compelling than any words or mere appearances could be.

If you wish to make a great impression, then accomplish something truly impressive. Spend your energy creating real, unique value and you won’t have to be concerned with what others think.

It’s great when you do what you say you’re going to do. What’s even better is when you don’t need to say what you’re going to do because it has already been done.

Don’t wait to be prodded, don’t hold off until conditions are perfect. Just move forward, take action, see a need and fill it, recognize a problem and solve it.

Success is when you go beyond wishing, planning, talking, and promising. Success is yours when you take action.

— Ralph Marston