Daily Motivator - July
 

July 1

What could have happened

There’s some value in speculating about the future. There’s almost no value in speculating about the past.

What could have happened, what might have happened, did not in fact happen. What you could have done was never actually done.

You cannot change anything by wishing a particular event had previously unfolded in a different way. The most you can do is learn from missed opportunities and unfortunate choices.

Collect the small amount of information from your consideration of what could have been, then let it go. Focus attention, energy, and effort on the many opportunities now available to you.

Point your thinking forward. Consider what will create a positive impact on your life, on your world.

Then act on your present opportunities. Leave behind all that could have been and work to bring about the best that can be.

— Ralph Marston

July 2

Unfamiliar territory

Do you want a better understanding of who you are and what you’re capable of achieving? Venture into unfamiliar territory.

Put yourself in a situation where you’re forced to depend on your own knowledge, resourcefulness, and strengths. You’ll quickly find out what those strengths are, and you’ll figure out ways to improve upon them.

That new territory could be physical, social, vocational, intellectual, or some combination. Whatever the case, it can energize you, heighten your awareness, and clarify what’s actually important to you.

Though your current situation has its challenges, you’ve mostly figured out how to handle them. Think of what you could learn, and how much you could grow, from a starkly different set of challenges.

Let yourself experience how well you respond to those challenges. Enable yourself to learn and improve from that experience.

A little bit of adventure can add a lot of value to your life. Go where you haven’t been, and gain a deeper understanding of who you truly are.

— Ralph Marston

Happy July my dear friends,
Let's thank God for getting us though
The Month of June one day at a time.
Stay safe this 4th of July.

July 3

Not a problem

You are skilled at solving problems and eager to do so. But that in itself can be a problem.

Because a few problems are best left alone. Sometimes your efforts to address a particular problem could be put to more valuable and effective use elsewhere.

Indeed, some problems are problems solely because you assume them to be. Just because you don’t like a particular situation doesn’t mean it’s harmful or threatening.

When you attempt to solve problems that aren’t really problems you can actually make things worse. Seek instead to focus your problem-solving skills where they can make a measurable, meaningful difference.

When a problem comes to your attention, before you jump into action, ask yourself. Is it really a problem the requires your irreplaceable time and attention?

If so, put your skills and resources to work on improving the situation. But if not, have the strength and confidence to simply let it be.

— Ralph Marston

July 4

Modest improvements

An improvement in one area of your life is not limited to that one area. It’s likely to benefit many other parts of your world.

No matter where you create value, it casts its favorable light into other places. Goodness travels quickly through life’s far-reaching interconnections.

It’s easy to see that your positive thoughts and actions often have immediate and direct results. They also have indirect results that can continue far beyond what’s obvious, beyond the moment, beyond the situation, beyond you.

With one single, limited success you initiate a positive momentum. It inspires you and others to build on that momentum.

The more you experience the rewards of your own actions, the more eager you’ll be to make a difference in other ways. You can ride that momentum through life’s countless connections to the big and fulfilling outcomes you desire.

What modest improvements can you make in the next ten minutes, or in the next few days? Create a little value in one place, and see how quickly it spreads.

— Ralph Marston

July 5

This life that is yours

Be present with the peace of this day. Fill your awareness with the potential of now.

Gaze with awe at the wonders that surround you. Feel all the goodness you have known as it echoes into this moment.

Listen to the harmony that holds all of life together. Join in with the energy, purpose and intention of existence.

Discover again and again how well you can resonate with the places, people, experiences, values, and ideas you encounter. Softly breathe in, slowly breathe out, and let it all be.

With a grateful heart, give your honest best to whatever situations arise. Step forward with confidence, with kindness, with the persistence to continue no matter what.

Here in this place, in this time, is this life that is yours. Live it fully, live it well, live it for the miracle it is.

— Ralph Marston

July 6

Sincerely living

Are you sincerely living each moment or are you putting on a dramatic performance? Are you more concerned about how you appear than you are about the truth, integrity, and effectiveness of what you’re doing?

Do you notice yourself voicing the same frustrations again and again? At some point it becomes more about the performance and less about actually resolving the issues.

Pause to take a step back, and invite fresh, new levels of gratitude into your awareness. Let go of the dramatic frustration, and honestly consider what you can do to improve the situation.

Do you feel the need to announce your love so often that it turns into a meaningless routine? Look instead for new and meaningful ways to put your love into practice.

Have you ever found yourself constructing elaborate narratives to feel sorry for yourself and to seek pity from others? Rather than casting yourself as a victim, put your energy into taking positive, incremental steps that enable you to steadily grow stronger.

This is your unique and precious life, not just another tired and predictable performance. Put your authentic love and energy into it, and make it the beautiful, fulfilling experience it can surely be.

— Ralph Marston

July 7

The way things are

To improve reality you must first accept and adapt to the specific reality that already exists. You cannot change reality by hiding from it, or wishing it away, or pretending it’s something different than it is.

You have dreams, desires, detailed ideas of how you would like the world to be. Yet the only starting place you can ever have is where you are, the way things are.

Shouting down, ignoring, or demonizing those who speak the truth will not make the truth go away. Only by accepting and working within what is true and what is real can you make any progress.

It is admirable to put passion and energy into moving toward an ideal. To do so you must carefully and honestly navigate through territory that is not ideal.

That means understanding and having some degree of respect for those who do not share your ideal. It means working to find common ground and then working further to expand upon that common ground.

The current reality has its roots in times and circumstances that existed long before you were ever aware of them. Your success at creating positive change depends on your willingness to humbly accept that truth and operate within the way things are.

— Ralph Marston

July 8

Express your thoughts

Expressing your thoughts in concrete form helps you organize them, challenge them, strengthen them, and expand on them. Whether you write down your thoughts or speak them out loud, or both, you’ll find great benefit in committing them to words.

Just because you think something doesn’t make it true. Yet you can hone your thoughts into a state of truth by first laying them out in tangible ways.

When thoughts are merely going around and around in your mind they risk turning into endless repetitions or pointless obsessions. Seek to give your thoughts power, relevance, and veracity by enabling them to be objectively considered.

You can produce great insights by becoming lost in your thoughts. Yet you have to take care that those insightful thoughts do not themselves become lost to memory and posterity.

You are constantly thinking and then thinking more. Hold on to the best of those thoughts, and give yourself the chance to refine them, by accurately preserving them.

Throughout each day, your mind is busy offering its treasures in the form of thoughts. Hold on to and improve upon the best of them, and enable your world to benefit from their great potential value.

— Ralph Marston

July 9

A single hour

How will you feel about yourself in exactly one hour? That depends on your attitude and your actions between now and then.

Will you use the time to live life fully? Or will you spend the time so wastefully and destructively that you soon come to regret it?

The choice is yours here and now. The quality of your future depends on what you do with the present.

A single hour will pass quickly. The way you live that next hour can impact your life for a long time to come.

Is there anything you wish you had done in the past hour, the past week or past few months? Now is your chance to stop wishing and start doing.

The next hour of your life begins now. Live it as if it’s the most important one yet, because it is.

— Ralph Marston

July 10

Live in the richness

Whatever you are struggling with is another manifestation of life’s richness. Appreciate it for what it is, and with renewed energy delve into the richness.

In those people and events and ideas that earn your passion abides even more of the richness. Let it capture you, and your imagination, and refresh your sense of possibility.

Life’s richness also tucks itself deeply into all those little mundane matters that seem at first not to matter. Yet when you look you’ll find it, and will be surprised again at the endless forms beauty can take.

In times of joy the richness seeks to make itself glaringly obvious. In seasons of sadness it quietly holds your hand and encourages you to push forward.

Today life’s richness surrounds you, infuses you. Your chance to know it comes and goes with every now.

You seek, you yearn, and what you yearn for is already connected to you. Live in the richness, wherever and however it may be.

— Ralph Marston

July 11

Beyond yourself

The most reliable route to an empty life is to live only for yourself. Every other pain becomes magnified by the pain of self absorption.

Yet you always have a way to get away from that unbearable emptiness. Begin to sincerely care for someone or something beyond yourself, and a golden warmth enters your life.

Look back on your experiences and you’re sure to recall times when this very thing has happened. Give of yourself, and you begin to know a sense of purpose that cannot be reached in any other way.

Behind every desire is a longing for meaning and fulfillment. To quench that thirst for meaning, seek to live beyond yourself.

Before you speak, choose words that will serve a greater good. Before you act, choose efforts that will make a positive contribution to the world around you.

In small things and large, use the opportunity of each moment to see and to act beyond your own concerns. Again and again, the success you create by doing so will be real and fulfilling.

— Ralph Marston

July 12

Living the consequences

What you’ve been doing got you where you are. What you do now can either keep you there or take you somewhere else.

Right now you are living the consequences of your past choices. That puts you in an ideal position to decide and to act upon what your future consequences will be.

You have gained valuable expertise on which habits and patterns bring you genuine fulfillment and which ones end up wasting your time or worse. Now you have the opportunity to act on that expertise and experience.

It’s easy to know what you feel like doing in the moment and what you don’t feel like doing. But that’s not always the best basis for choosing among your options.

Fortunately, you also have a lifetime of experiencing the consequences of your own choices. With every new choice you can take more of those consequences into consideration.

Very soon you’ll be living the consequences of whatever you decide to do right now. Based on the knowledge of all your past and present consequences, ask yourself, what will that decision be?

— Ralph Marston

July 13

Magical world

Imagine a world in which everything seems to happen by magic. In this world, your needs and desires are provided to you with little to no effort on your part.

Food of your choosing is magically delivered to your table. Shampoo, toothpaste, clothing, shoes, toys, and anything else you could wish for appear on your doorstep whenever you want.

Garbage and waste are magically whisked away. Limitless hours of entertainment, tailored precisely to your taste, magically and instantly appear at your command.

Such a world is not particularly difficult to imagine. Because with present-day infrastructure and technology, for the most part you are already living in it.

But when desires are automatically satisfied, it leaves you with a gnawing emptiness. And you wonder, when all you ever do is choose from menus, what provides meaning in your life?

What makes anything meaningful is not just having it, but the investment of your time and effort and resourcefulness in it. That, you come to realize, is the real magic.

— Ralph Marston

July 14

Season of achievement

You want to do this, you need to do that. But wanting and needing won’t get anything accomplished.

You envision all sorts of ways to improve your world, your environment, your life, and that’s great. Yet vision alone is not enough.

What if you were to take just a single initial step? And what if that felt so satisfying you became inspired to take another?

There’s something you can do right now to put what you visualize into tangible form. Some readily accessible action will demonstrate to yourself both your commitment and your capability.

Give yourself that experience. Then extend it indefinitely into an exhilarating season of achievement and fulfillment.

What you work to attain is well worth the effort, because in that effort you become an increasingly better version of yourself. Go ahead and make it happen.

— Ralph Marston

Yesterday was my 35th Anniversary by God's grace.
I'm truly grateful for my A.A. Family and friends.
I'll be celebrating on Zoom tomorrow at 3:00 p.m ET
ID# 261-537-1403/ no Passcode.
Please come if you can. I would love to
meet you Kracker and Tammy. God bless you.

Congratulations! :29:

July 15

Respect yourself

The best option is not necessarily the one for which you can merely come up with a justification. Your best option is the one you can genuinely respect yourself for choosing.

Will you respect yourself tomorrow for doing this, or many years from now? It’s a benchmark that can be difficult to meet, yet rewarding to live with.

Would you gain respect for anyone else who does what you’re about to do, or not? Hold yourself to that same standard.

Life has taught you much about what behaviors to respect and which ones to be wary of. Every day you can utilize that wisdom by holding a bright mirror up to your own words, thoughts, and activities.

You’ve gained respect for what makes sense, for what works, for what usefully contributes to life. Seek to align yourself, your efforts, your inclinations, with those things you respect.

Pause and consider your level of respect for whatever you’re about to do. If you can honestly respect yourself, you’re on the right track.

— Ralph Marston

July 16

Let life be beautiful

Let life be beautiful. Let your needs be few.

Let clouds drift across the deep blue sky. Allow yourself to know the joy that has no reason or hidden design.

Take breath in, let breath out. Do the best at what you do, see the best in others.

Be slow to lose your patience, and eager to forgive. Offer kindness every time you can, and candor when it’s called for.

Embrace the life that this day brings. Forge new goodness and value from whatever comes your way.

Understand the immense value of everything to which you’re connected. Allow the beauty, and be the beauty.

— Ralph Marston

Congratulations Bro. That's alot of years. May God bless u with many more years to come. That u can serve and continue to spread the message of hope through the program of A.A. God b with u

Thank you Tammy. God bless you.

July 17

Increasingly positive direction

The life you’ve lived has successfully gotten you to this point. Now expand on that success.

Your experience has not been perfect, but neither has it been a complete disaster. It’s positioned you to move beyond what hasn’t worked well and to more fully embrace all that has been helpful.

Encourage yourself to be thankful for all you’ve been through so far. With a perspective of gratitude, you can appreciate and utilize the great value life’s experiences have provided to you.

At this point you can smile about the disappointments of the past. Because you know how much they’ve enabled you to grow.

You’re also at a place where you can understand what has made the good times so good. As you apply that understanding going forward, there are many more positive memories to be made.

See the profound success that’s evidenced by your presence in this moment. Continue the momentum, and commit yourself to keep life going in an increasingly positive direction.

— Ralph Marston

July 18

Do it by doing

If you try hard to do something, the trying leads you to be frustrated and ineffective. Instead, let go of the idea that you’re trying and just begin to get it done.

Trying starts off with a negative assumption. When you see yourself as trying you’ll be focused on the possibility you won’t get it done.

Simply taking one action after another puts you in an entirely different frame of mind. You experience yourself having an impact, and that’s a positive perspective you can build on.

You can do it without trying. You can do it by doing.

Take the initial step and let your active participation give you confidence. With each incremental result you’ll be inspired to create more.

Melt away the resistance that comes from the thought that you’re trying. Stop merely trying, go ahead and get it done.

— Ralph Marston

July 19

Form the future

What you cannot do now is change the past. What you cannot avoid doing now is to form the future.

The past is where you’ve learned and experienced, yet you’re not there anymore. The future is where you’re unavoidably headed.

That future has not been determined yet. And therein lies inexhaustible opportunity.

To whatever extent you regret the past, you can improve the future. You’re able to transform the energy of that regret into inspiration, determination, and effective action going forward.

Your disappointment with what has been has the very real potential to push you in a more positive and fulfilling direction. Let your past exert its favorable influence on your choices right now, and continue to do so going forward.

Today you have the power to expand upon what has served you well and to redirect what has let you down. You’re better positioned than ever before to form a positive and fulfilling future.

— Ralph Marston

July 20

Comfortable

Comfort is helpful until it is not. Too little of it wears you down, while too much of it can hollow you out.

A comfortable situation will give you space to heal, to re-energize, to build strength. Other times, too much comfort for too long engulfs you in thick, smothering complacency.

Seek to avail yourself of those comforts that enable you to act with confidence, initiative, and effectiveness. Distance yourself from the comforts that entice you into endless repose.

The comforts that serve you best are the ones you can venture away from, knowing you can rely on being able to return. Whether they are places, ideas, people, or experiences, they encourage and facilitate the exercise of your strengths and capabilities.

The comforts that can entrap you are those that threaten not to be there when you come back. Such comforts that limit your participation in life are not in your best interest.

Make yourself comfortable, but not too comfortable. You’ve got a rich, challenging, and fulfilling life to live.

— Ralph Marston

July 21

Ready for opportunities

Today will offer you opportunities. Are you able to recognize them, and prepared to make something out of them?

A sense of meaningful purpose illuminates opportunities, letting you see them for what they are. Be clear about what you seek, and opportunities that otherwise would be invisible jump sharply into view.

When you do see those opportunities, you’ll need a potent place where you can put them, nurture them, and bring them to fruition. That comes from establishing and maintaining structure, organization, and discipline in the way you live.

If you’re searching for an automatic windfall that just brings vaguely defined goodies into your life, you won’t find opportunity. Yet when you have the clear intention of working to create specific value in the world, you’re sure to encounter numerous opportunities.

Arrange your life so it can resonate with the kinds of opportunities that are meaningful to you. Invest yourself in being open to opportunities, and you’ll find yourself connecting with them.

Opportunities are out there, and more are arising all the time. Be the person who can see them, who will do something with them, and the opportunities become yours.

— Ralph Marston

July 22

What you should do

It’s what you should do, right? But what if it isn’t?

You assume you should stack today’s activities in a certain way because, well, that’s the way you’ve always done it. Yet perhaps there’s another approach that would work better, would give you access to more enriching possibilities.

You say what you should say, react as you should, and feel the way you should. Consider how much of it all is based on well entrenched assumptions and habits.

Those habits and assumptions can be helpful most of the time. But that doesn’t mean they’re your best choice all the time.

You can always ask yourself whether the path you’re about to take is merely because you think you should or because it’s actually the best option at the moment. Don’t let an assumption of what you should be doing limit the choices of what you could be doing.

Sometimes you can discover great new value outside the familiar territory of what you assume you should do. The world is bigger than you previously thought and the possibilities more numerous than you’ve yet considered, so be sure not to box yourself in.

— Ralph Marston

July 23

Live like it all matters

You can get by in life without caring about anything. But why in the world would you want to live your life that way?

You can get through your work just doing the bare minimum, being sloppy and inattentive. Yet the time you’re wasting on meaningless activity is your own precious time.

You can get through the day being selfish, rude, and inconsiderate. But the person damaged most by your selfishness is you.

Life without caring wears you down and empties you out, even if just for a few hours or minutes. Fortunately, you never have to live that way.

You can always choose to care, to give your best, to be kind, considerate, diligent, purposeful. It’s not always easy, not always convenient, but it’s always available and always your best option.

Give your sincere care to the people, activities, circumstances, and possibilities in your life. Live like it all matters and you’ll know without a doubt how much it all does.

— Ralph Marston

July 24

Acting early

With a small effort right now you can avoid a much larger effort and expense later. For example, a fresh coat of paint today saves you from having to replace rotten boards a couple of years from now.

It’s tempting to let things slide when they’re not urgent. But doing so tends to turn simple tasks into complicated, compound problems.

Plenty of issues arise that you don’t really want to face. Yet as you’ve discovered again and again, avoiding them pretty much always makes them worse.

Indeed, the fact you don’t want to deal with something right now is a good argument in favor of going ahead and handling it. Acting early is a powerful way to leverage your time.

It can also reduce the stress and anxiety in your life. The problems you’ve already addressed are no longer hanging over you.

Act at your earliest opportunity. You’ll get more done with less effort and expense, and have more time to enjoy the beautiful existence in which you’re immersed.

— Ralph Marston

July 25

With courage

In the day ahead you’re likely to encounter problems, dilemmas, challenges of various kinds. You can either complain about them or you can work your way through them.

If you seek to avoid all difficulties you won’t succeed in doing so. And in the process you’ll miss out on some of life’s most enriching experiences.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to invite trouble. What it means, and what is enormously helpful, is to face each day with courage.

Courage comes from accepting that there will be difficulties, there will be unknowns, and living your life anyway. Courage grows when you’re following a purpose that’s sufficiently compelling to make the pain and trouble well worth the trouble.

To get up and get going each morning is not the easiest thing. Yet it is certainly preferable to the alternatives.

With courage you can make the choice to move forward through life with its inevitable pitfalls. With courage, you create the value and fulfillment you are meant to create.

— Ralph Marston

July 26

Articulate your vision

What specifically could you do to improve and sustain the quality of life for you and for others? Envision it, then give depth and substance to that vision.

You know from experience that you regularly find yourself wishing for this or for that. But mere wishes have negligible power, particularly if they’re for outcomes over which you have limited influence.

A compelling vision that you have the ability to enact is a whole different matter. With such a vision directing your efforts, you can change life for the better.

Perhaps the vision is something as simple as a desktop free of clutter. Or maybe it’s a much more ambitious vision that will take years to fulfill.

Whatever the scope of your vision, when it’s meaningful, realistic, and achievable it pushes you in a positive direction. It constantly reminds you of what matters and urges you to act on what matters.

What good things do you envision yourself doing today, or this month, or over the next couple of years? Give yourself the power of vision, and give your best to all the moments you pass through.

— Ralph Marston

July 27

Possible things

When you take risks you won’t always get positive results. But when you avoid taking risks you’ll never get any results at all.

You can’t be certain about what will happen tomorrow until it happens, tomorrow. Yet the only time you can act is right now, today.

Pretty much never will you get access to a sure thing that has any significant value. However, every moment of every day is filled with possible things.

Life’s most consequential advances are built not on what’s guaranteed, but on what’s possible. What’s possible has been good enough for everyone who has ever lived, and it’s certainly good enough for you.

Get yourself well informed, mix in some diligence and common sense. Then take a chance on what’s possible.

Not every possible thing you attempt will come to fruition. Yet when you persist, enough of them will.

— Ralph Marston

July 28

Work on it

How do you transform a pile of rocks into a magnificent castle? You work on it.

How do you transform a rough idea for a story into a blockbuster motion picture? You work on it.

Your life and your world are filled with untapped potential. Turning that potential into value is a matter of time, intention, focus, and effort.

Achievement is relatively rare. Yet the raw materials for it are so abundant you cannot avoid encountering them.

The path from what’s commonly available to what’s highly desirable goes through you and others like you. There’s a whole world of physical reality, ideas, needs, concepts, energy, techniques, and much more to work with.

Value is created by effort. Think of all you can do right here, right now, to make some.

— Ralph Marston

July 29

All of what you can do

Are you doing all of what you can do? Or are you settling for just some of it?

You’re going through the whole day today, so it’s in your best interest to give your whole effort to it. Don’t end up leaving opportunities and possibilities on the table that you have the time and ability to utilize.

Start each task and work until you finish it. Otherwise, you’re cheating yourself out of large quantities of richness and fulfillment that could be yours.

You deserve the full experience of your own life, of the world you live in, not just a fraction of it. So put your full attention and effort into living the experience and giving all the value you can give.

That doesn’t mean overwhelming yourself by taking on more than you can do. What is means is making thorough use of what’s available to you, and of what you’re capable of accomplishing.

This is your passion, your career, your community, your family, your life, your time, your dream, and it all matters. Give it your best, and do all of what you can do.

— Ralph Marston

July 30

The price you pay

If you make ambitious, specific plans for the day, the week, the month, some of those plans are likely to fall through. That’s no reason to avoid making meaningful plans and working to carry them out.

If you have long-term goals and dreams for your life, you’re going to encounter some painful disappointments in connection with them. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid having those dreams.

It’s difficult when life doesn’t go the way you planned. Yet what’s far more difficult is to never plan much of anything at all.

Having no ambition, no goals, no dreams, will not shield you from pain and disappointment. It will guarantee pain and disappointment.

Make those plans, even though some may not work out. Set those goals, dream those dreams, and put the best of yourself into following them.

One way or another, you’re going to encounter disappointment and pay its price. That’s all the more reason to make sure you live a rich and fulfilling life in return for the price you pay.

— Ralph Marston

July 31

Fail your way forward

The first attempt yields nothing usable. The second, the fifth, the fifteenth attempt, they all fall flat.

Keep going, continue learning, refining, figuring out what went wrong before and adjusting your strategy. As you do, you’ll zero in on what works best.

No effort ever has to be wasted. Because every effort results in valuable experience.

Getting it right is often a matter of getting it wrong enough times. Every step is a step forward when you resolve to keep going.

Rather than getting yourself mired in discouragement, acknowledge what went wrong. Use what you’ve learned to fine tune your next effort and to boost your enthusiasm for going ahead with that effort.

Failure is a common experience, and one you can use to great advantage. When it happens, fail your way forward and you’ll be working your way to success.

— Ralph Marston