Daily Motivator - October
 

October 1

Authentic life

Don’t spend your day convincing other people how much you care. Spend your day putting your care into action.

Stop exerting your energy to prove how much you know. Continually invest your energy in learning something new.

Operate on the level of reality, not at a pretentious distance from it. Rather than obsessively seeking to appear a certain way, do what is necessary to actually be that way.

An authentic life is far more satisfying for you, as well as more helpful to others, than living behind a facade. A life of authenticity puts the power of truth into everything you do.

It is better to have truth leading you than to have truth chasing you. Work to put real substance in your life rather than fraudulent and fragile appearances.

Align your awareness and your choices with what is real, with what is true, with what is you. Live with the authenticity that will free you to experience life at its best.

— Ralph Marston

October 2

Reality always wins

Reality is often painful. Yet opposing reality is much more painful because it is ultimately impossible.

You can deny reality but your denial carries no weight beyond your own perception. Whether you accept it or not, reality always wins.

Your best choice is clear. Whatever dreams, goals, hopes, intentions you may have, be realistic.

Keep yourself on the side of truth, on the side of reality. Don’t let yourself be seduced into thinking, hoping, or acting contrary to what’s real and true.

The world presents you with an abundance of very real possibilities. Though it will take work, you can experience much goodness and fulfillment while at the same time being realistic.

As demanding as it may be, challenge yourself to keep your perceptions and expectations realistic. Reality always wins, so set yourself up to win along with it.

— Ralph Marston

Happy new month my dear recovery
Reading page Family, sorry a day late.
Moving to a new state this weekend, and the
move has been very trying for the wife and me.
So please Pray for us. God bless and have a
blessed week.

October 3

Eager to join the struggle

Wake up eager to join the struggle. Step forward and engage with the challenges of life.

You have needs, desires, goals, dreams, and responsibilities. But to have them all provided for with no effort on your part will reduce you to nothing.

Your life is worth what you are willing to pay for it. Every moment you have the opportunity to make it more valuable.

Yes, you have many blessings and advantages you didn’t have to work for, including life itself. And you’re burdened with numerous difficulties that are not your fault.

But it will serve no useful purpose to claim any sort of special privilege or victim status. Your best path forward is to go to work with what you have and create meaningful new value for yourself and your world.

What is the most compelling challenge you are able to address in the moment? Invest yourself in that, and enable all of life to reap the rich rewards of your doing so.

— Ralph Marston

Willbe275
May God bless you and your family as you travel to your new location. Pray that you seek the Lord for all your needs. Pray that you find new friends and support in recovery for there's great A.A. groups all over the country. May he guide you in all that do in this new journey of life. For through him all is possible. When you trust God fully with all your heart. Take care and God b with U

Praying for you.

October 4

Feel the power

Feel the power of your own discipline. Experience the benefits of your own intentions.

Set a specific, measurable, achievable goal. Then do the necessary work to make it happen.

It is within your reach. It is something over which you have control.

It seems like a simple, obvious thing, and it absolutely is. But that’s no reason to ignore its value, or to avoid doing it.

Set a goal, achieve it, and decide for yourself whether the whole undertaking makes your life better or worse. Then, based on the experience, consider your priorities going forward.

You have significant influence over many facets of your life and your future. Remind yourself to make good use of that influence.

— Ralph Marston

Thank you for your prayers, I'm a
little behind in my daily recovery reading,
this Journey has been really rough,
I'm now in the state of Virginia and
it's going to take awhile to adjust and to
unpack, so please continue to pray for my darling wife and me. God bless you and have a great day.

October 5

Enduring joys

You can find joy by being impulsive in the moment. Yet the bigger, enduring joys demand forethought, along with intentional and sustained effort.

It’s easy to know what you want right now. What’s much more powerful is to figure out what you want six months from now, or ten years from now.

Your time, energy, and resources are limited. It makes sense to spend them mostly in the service of what truly matters, of what will last.

Yes, give your awareness to living in the moment. But don’t invest everything you have in a fleeting whimsy.

Live in the moment while also creating value that will outlive the moment. Fully enjoy and experience all that is, while making good, intentional use of it to enhance all that can be.

With your intention and your work, seek to transform ephemeral moments into the lasting joys of a life well lived. Make the moment mean something, and enable its value to continue.

— Ralph Marston

October 6

Compelling purpose

Do you wish to have more energy? Then focus on a more compelling purpose.

Do you feel like you should be getting more done? Then give yourself a more enticing reason to do it.

Step for a moment outside your own frame of reference. Look objectively at the opportunity you have right here, right now, as the person you are.

Think of what matters to you, and then consider all you could do if you would just do it. Imagine the difference you can make if you will just make it.

Of course, there are all sorts of distractions, complications, challenges, and burdens. Yet you are fully capable of focusing on a purpose that will transcend them all.

Give yourself permission to see that purpose. And give yourself the push, day after day, to follow it with all you have.

— Ralph Marston

October 7

Prioritize your possibilities

Life has more possibilities than you can ever realize. It’s in your best interest to let some of them go.

Don’t get to the point where you’re so consumed with hoarding possibilities that you have no time to work on them. Prioritize your possibilities so you can actually fulfill some of them.

It’s great to have the options that all life’s possibilities offer. Yet for options to have any value, you have to exercise some and discard others.

Walking away from any of your treasured possibilities can be painful. Understand, though, that pain is a small price to pay for being able to fulfill other, more meaningful possibilities.

Do you really want to spend all your time protecting, maintaining, and keeping track of way too many possibilities? Or would you prefer to spend your time and effort bringing a select number of those possibilities to life?

Pick some possibilities to keep and to work on, and set aside the rest. Give yourself the freedom and the ability to make the best possibilities happen.

— Ralph Marston

October 8

Set your mind to it

Set your mind to it. Keep it set there until you have it done.

Focus your awareness on the job at hand. Re-direct the energy of all distractions, interruptions, and random thoughts toward what you have chosen to accomplish.

There are plenty of excuses for stopping, or pausing, or giving up. Decide in advance to have nothing to do with those excuses.

You have made your choice and now you can follow through with that choice. You are doing important work and you have every ability and intention of continuing until the work is done well.

There’s no need to be concerned with whether it’s easy or difficult or pleasant or uncomfortable. You’re doing just fine, and you can continue for as long as necessary.

Set your mind to it, and get it done. Experience for yourself what an amazing and useful difference you can make, just by deciding to do so.

— Ralph Marston

October 9

Leave outrage behind

Your anger and outrage are well justified. And that’s precisely why you must let them go.

Anger and outrage will call your attention to meaningful problems. But they will not solve those problems.

You won’t make any progress by focusing solely on what you’re opposed to. You make progress by envisioning and working toward what is valuable and desirable.

Go beyond the anger, go beyond the outrage. Go to work and create a more compelling and favorable alternative.

Don’t get sucked into endlessly fighting what you oppose. Instead, get busy making it irrelevant.

Take the energy of your anger and point it in a positive direction. Leave the outrage behind so decisively and successfully that it cannot happen again.

— Ralph Marston

October 10

Call upon your discipline

You don’t have to give in to temptation. You can go on living your life and you’ll be just fine.

Whatever is tempting you is seeking to squeeze your focus from the long term to the immediate moment. Giving in might give you a tiny fleeting pleasure, but you’ll pay a big price going forward.

It’s a tradeoff that’s not worth taking. Hold the temptation in your awareness, realize you’re in full control, and then let it go.

Call upon your discipline and you can be free to go on living with intention and purpose. Activate your discipline and you can avoid all the continuing regrets that would have otherwise come.

You can make your choices into real, meaningful choices and not just accommodations to momentary whims. Through practice, you can demonstrate to yourself that you’re stronger than the temptations.

Look straight ahead and see all the good things that are possible if you’ll simply keep going. Keep going, and leave the temptations behind.

— Ralph Marston

October 11

Triumph over fear

At the root of fear is the knowing that life has value. If you had nothing to lose, such as your existence, the people you love, your resources and abilities, there would be nothing to fear.

Love makes fear possible. Thus with love you can triumph over fear.

When you have much to fear it is because you have much to live for. And it is precisely in purposeful living that you exert the power of love to successfully navigate through fear.

Fear can be acutely informative. Love enables you to make purposeful, beneficial, strategic use of that information.

When you feel fear you are also feeling the power and the potential of love. Make it your choice to put that power to good use.

Acknowledge the fear, gain insight and take energy from it. Then focus that energy, along with your attention and your actions, on all the meaningful and generous living you can do.

— Ralph Marston

October 12

Good work

You’ve been doing good work. Keep it up, and add to it.

You’ve been making a difference, and life has benefited from your efforts. Continue those efforts, and discover how you can make them even more effective.

Does it sometimes feel like your efforts don’t matter? What you do matters to the extent you choose to make it matter, and that’s a choice you have in every moment.

Often the encouragement from others is absent, and sometimes the world sends you a flood of negativity, even downright hostility. Make note of the feedback, perhaps inserting some reasonable adjustments, and move forward with what you know is good and right and worthwhile.

You’ve made some mistakes in the past and you’re likely to make a few more as time goes by. Yet from every mistake you can learn, you can improve, and you can carry on.

You’ve learned much about what succeeds and what doesn’t, what’s effective and what’s a waste, what adds richness and fulfillment to life. Take a deep, peaceful breath, be thankful for how far you’ve come, and keep up the good work.

— Ralph Marston

October 13

Choose encouragement

Discouragement does not come from what happens. Discouragement comes from the way you choose to see what happens.

It’s very helpful when people offer you their sincere encouragement. Yet you can decide to find encouragement in whatever other people say or do whether they seek to encourage you or not.

Are you going to be discouraged or encouraged by the events of this particular day? That depends on you.

You’ll be more effective, you’ll get more done when you’re encouraged about what you’re doing. So it makes sense to choose encouragement, even when it’s coming only from you.

Have you ever encouraged someone else, and witnessed that person benefiting from the encouragement? Always keep in mind that you can do the same for yourself.

Be thankful and accepting of encouragement from others. And be ready to choose encouragement for yourself whenever you’re looking to have a little more.

— Ralph Marston

October 14

Choose now

If you wait until the last minute, that minute is going to be highly stressful. You’ll be rushed, pressed for time, and not anywhere near as effective as you could have been earlier.

Is there anything you’ve been putting off until the last minute? Do yourself a favor and get it done long before you have to get it done.

Yes, there are plenty of other things you’d rather be doing. But think about how much more you’ll enjoy the fun, desirable activities when the tedious but necessary chores are all finished.

Choose the undesirable task long before you get to the point where you have no choice. Put yourself in control of your time while you are still able to do so.

By choosing when and where to do what’s unpleasant, you can take much of the sting out of it. By getting it done early, you give yourself more time to be free of it.

Choose now, assert your intention, empower yourself, and get it done. Rather than putting it off, do it now, and claim all the benefits of that timely, responsible choice.

— Ralph Marston

October 15

Keep practicing

Do what you’re skilled at doing, and you’ll get better. Do what you’re not so good at doing, and you’ll get better.

The road to excellence is paved with action. Wherever you started, wherever you now are, practice can improve your results.

When you have some spare moments, practice being useful, productive, creative, focused. The more you practice, the more valuable that practice becomes.

Whether a particular skill comes easy to you or whether you have struggled to develop it, put it to use. In either case, with practice you’ll improve.

If it’s been a long time since you’ve employed a certain ability, pick it up again. Re-acquaint yourself with that ability, keep it alive, thriving, and improving within you.

Keep yourself strong, able, and proficient, and keep improving on it all. Keep practicing.

— Ralph Marston

October 16

Good times

The difficult times are times you’ll eventually treasure. Because they’re times when you have no choice but to be your best.

The enjoyable times are times you can already treasure now, and then continue to treasure as the years pass. Knowing how good life can be provides the courage and the strength to make it good again.

In times of confidence and stability you discover how much you can achieve. In times of uncertainty you learn the value of being decisive, committed, resourceful.

Times of loneliness can be painful, yet they can also be insightful, productive and strengthening. Times of camaraderie and fellowship can be hectic and demanding while also uniquely enriching.

Indeed, all times can end up being good times, each in their own way. Whatever may be going on, you can find value to live and to share.

The potential for goodness exists in every stretch of time. In each different situation, during all the times you inhabit, choose to live that goodness fully, and to spread it far and wide.

— Ralph Marston

October 17

Positive vision

It’s not enough to be opposed. You have to be supportive of an alternative.

It’s not enough to point out what someone is doing wrong. To improve the situation, you must be able to offer a more workable approach.

A common enemy can bring people together and compel them to action. Yet for that action to be sustained, for the group cohesion to endure, there must be a common positive vision as well.

Knowing what you don’t like can provide valuable insight. In order to move forward, though, you must identify what you desire, what direction you seek to go.

The bad things are easy to spot. Once you do that, challenge yourself to develop the good things that will be more compelling and beneficial.

Go beyond obsessing over what is wrong. Focus on a positive vision that will inspire positive action and bring positive results.

— Ralph Marston

October 18

Infinite mystery

Keep yourself always open to wonder, to beauty, to awe. In whatever happens, see not only what happens but also the infinite mystery behind it all.

Eagerly help yourself to more than your share of what is to be experienced and discovered. Be amazed you can do so without the slightest concern that the supply will ever be exhausted.

Seasons change as they always have in ways like never before. Paradox dances with truth, and beauty spins away in ever more sublime variety.

You never know all and you always know more. Walk through the forest and see once again how that works.

Humble yourself in your mastery. Pride yourself on your ignorance.

As each possibility is realized more becomes possible. Already infinite, the mystery grows, and here you are to live its splendor.

— Ralph Marston

October 19

Time in silence

In silence you can think complete thoughts. In silence you can focus your awareness without being interrupted.

Silence enables you to strengthen your connection to what’s most meaningful. Silence provides fertile ground for discovery, contemplation, and insight.

Life is filled with harmony, cacophony, and individual sounds of every kind. Much of what you know and feel about the world comes to you from sound.

Yet as essential and enlightening as those sounds are, you can extend their value by regularly stepping away from them. In peaceful silence, you have space to absorb, integrate, and deepen the meaning of what you’ve heard, and seen, and experienced.

Silence challenges you to confront yourself, to touch the truth of who you are and what you care about. As unsettling as that can be, it ultimately makes you stronger, more purposeful, more resilient.

Every sound you hear consumes your attention. Spend time in silence, giving your attention a chance to restore itself, your spirit some room for reflection and renewal.

— Ralph Marston

October 20

Clearer picture

Step back from what you think about it and feel about it. Look carefully and more clearly at the reality of what is.

Your mind is powerful and highly useful, and that’s mostly a good thing. Yet your thoughts have so much influence that they can distort your perceptions.

For example, your thoughts can convince you that the whole world is in a hopeless mess. Yet at the same time the reality of your situation can be just fine, and normal, even pleasant.

It’s not a good idea to ignore your thoughts. It is smart, however, to keep in mind that your thoughts and feelings have an influence on everything you experience.

You can never be completely objective, and would not want to be. What you can do is remind yourself that your perspective is not the only valid perspective.

If it were not for your thoughts about things, how would things be? Balance involvement with detachment, and get a clearer picture.

— Ralph Marston

October 21

Accept who you are

Envision a person who loves you for who you are. Then be that person.

Think of how it would be to have someone who accepts your flaws, forgives your missteps, understands your quirks. You can do all that for yourself.

Certainly you’d like to improve various aspects of your life and your behavior. But that doesn’t mean you have to reject or condemn the way you already are.

While you’re working on doing better, accept where you are. With that acceptance you encourage and empower yourself to move forward.

As a significant added benefit, you learn to be more accepting of others. Love who you are, and that love is available for giving to those you care about.

Accept who you are, where you are, how you are. Free yourself to be your best.

— Ralph Marston

October 22

Letting problems be

Why do people regularly ignore problems and expect they’ll go away? Because they do go away, not every time of course but often enough to be noticeable.

Is it a good idea to ignore a problem? That depends on the problem.

Many problems can be effectively solved by decisive action. And then there are problems that will be made even worse by focusing on them and attempting to remedy them.

Just because you can fix a problem doesn’t mean it’s the best use of your time and resources. Just because you want to fix a problem doesn’t mean you’ll make things better.

It’s great to work on resolving difficult problems and to create meaningful benefits by doing so. It’s not so great to look under every rock in a quest to continually use your problem-solving skills.

Be more effective at dealing with problems by being selective and intentional about which problems to tackle. Add more richness and fulfillment to life by simply letting some of the problems be.

— Ralph Marston

October 23

Question your needs

Question your needs. Stop being burdened with needs that exist only because of your assumptions or self deceptions.

Some of your needs are authentic. Others are merely choices you’ve allowed yourself to characterize as needs.

Seek to be more honest with yourself. Is every need real, or are some of them fabrications?

There are plenty of desirable things you can have, and use, and enjoy, and benefit from, without needing them. Indeed, you can improve the quality of those things in your life by making them choices instead of needs.

Look for opportunities to live more by intention and less by compulsion. Examine the differences between what you assume you need and what you actually need.

Refuse to operate at the mercy of needs that are not really needs. Take responsibility for your choices and you will greatly improve where those choices lead.

— Ralph Marston

October 24

Sidetracked

In the less than perfect moments your life gains richness. The awkward, uncomfortable times are when you grow in strength, wisdom, resilience.

The treasured stories you have to tell are not about when everything went exactly according to plan. What often makes life interesting are the things you could never anticipate.

Of course you do what you can to minimize distractions, interruptions, and other deviations from your intended path. But when you do get sidetracked, maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

Maybe, in fact, it can bring some new form of value into your life. Perhaps you’ll discover good things you never knew you were missing.

Structure, order, dependability, discipline, they’re all essential to a well-lived life. But so is a little bit of chaos now and again.

Keep yourself on the course you’ve set while also remaining open to the surprises that surely await. Sometimes your life will benefit from getting a little bit sidetracked.

— Ralph Marston

October 25

Goodness

You don’t have to be rich to be generous. You do have to be generous to be truly rich.

You don’t have to have an elaborate support system to be focused and disciplined, or responsible, or honest. You can choose those enriching values, and many others, regardless of your background or current situation.

The good fortune of one person does not reduce the potential for anyone else’s good fortune. Indeed, prosperity, thriving, and genuine excellence all lead to much more of the same.

What primarily makes life good is not what you start with or what others do or say or have. The purposes and values with which you choose to live are the main drivers of the way your life unfolds.

Economic, political, environmental, cultural circumstances all have an influence on your experience of life. Yet more consequential than those things are your intentions and choices, day after day, year upon year.

Keep on choosing what’s true, what’s good, what has lasting value, what has meaning beyond the moment. Keep on creating new and authentic goodness for yourself and your world.

— Ralph Marston

October 26

Life audit

Publicly traded companies must undergo regular audits of their operations to protect the interests of shareholders. Those audits are designed to reduce waste and deception, and to uncover opportunities for increased effectiveness and efficiency.

Every now and then, it’s a good idea to audit your own personal operations in a similar way. After all, you can sometimes benefit from a detailed examination of the way you live your life.

Are there things you’re doing that cost you time and resources, but don’t provide any value or enjoyment? It’s all too easy to settle into useless habits, and it’s a helpful exercise to routinely rid yourself of them.

Are there assumptions you’ve been depending upon that are no longer true, or perhaps never were? By abandoning those assumptions you can elevate your thinking to a new level of clarity.

Can you identify useless grudges you’ve been holding or important tasks you’ve been putting off? How about opportunities you’ve ignored or treasured relationships you’ve been taking for granted?

Spend a little time giving your life a mental audit, identifying what’s working, what’s not, and what you can do to improve. Find those opportunities you’ve been hiding in plain sight and make good use of all you discover.

— Ralph Marston

October 27

Affirmative mode

Think of how you can center more of your time and awareness around what’s good in your life. Seek to direct more thoughts and energy toward all you love and treasure.

Let past joyful moments continue to resonate through your life long after they happen. Enhance the present with your commitment to working toward positive experiences for yourself and others.

Choose thoughts, habits, and activities that get you living life in the affirmative mode. Accept and deal with reality as it is, and then work to bend that reality in beneficial ways.

An orientation toward victimhood, excuses, and complaints can poison your awareness and impair your efforts. Instead, continue to point your thoughts toward improvement, achievement, understanding, and positive purpose.

What you carry in your head and in your heart has great influence on the way your life unfolds. Make the decision, day after day, to embed the best thoughts and expectations within yourself.

Position yourself to create the most rewarding outcomes. Go through life in the affirmative mode.

— Ralph Marston

October 28

It all matters

What you’re doing today will make a difference. Be sure it’s the kind of difference you desire.

The choices you make right now, and an hour from now, will have an impact. Choose in such a way that the impact is a positive one.

What you do, what you neglect, what you finish, what you put off until later, it all matters. Your thoughts, your words, your habits, feelings and efforts all contribute to the substance of your life.

Everything about the way you live matters. It provides you with a powerful opportunity that always continues to unfold.

You can make use of your wisdom and experience to gain even more wisdom and experience. Then you’re able to apply all that to living with intention, adding much richness to your world.

There’s much you can do with life, much you can do about life. Pay attention, choose wisely, and give your best, because it all matters.

— Ralph Marston

October 29

This imperfect moment

The day didn’t work out the way you hoped. Perhaps you can enjoy it anyway.

It’s good to make plans and see those plans through to fruition. Even so, you’re free to create new goodness from whatever happens, even if it’s unplanned and unexpected.

No matter how you got here, this moment is yours to live at the highest level of fulfillment. Regardless of what you have or don’t have, you have the opportunity to make the best of today.

Allow thankfulness for that opportunity to fill your heart. Then look around, notice the good you can do, the richness you can experience, and do so.

See the great potential in this imperfect moment. Step away from your judgments and delight in the experience.

Things are not like you expected. Now is your chance to make them even better.

— Ralph Marston

October 30

Upgrading your choices

You cannot be everything, and would not want to be. The life you actually live is the life you choose, so choose with care, and love.

The wondrous mental, physical, and spiritual power of your being is always pointed in some specific direction based on your choice. Each choice excludes all other choices, and builds upon choices that have come before.

With your choices you make sense of the chaos and complexity that would otherwise engulf and devour you. Your choices create specific value and give meaning to time and place, to objects, motions, and experiences.

Countless forces beyond your control exert great influence upon your life. Even so, your own choices are what largely determine how you deal with and experience whatever comes your way.

If some small thing or some big thing is not going well for you, there are choices you can make to improve the situation. Though they may not be immediately obvious or easy to implement, with thoughtfulness and persistence you can uncover them and act on them.

What choice right now would make the future a little bit better? Keep asking that, and answering it, upgrading your choices and doing the best you can.

— Ralph Marston

October 31

Love and courage

Don’t be reckless, but don’t cower in fear either. Be careful, yet not so careful that you fail to live your life.

The world has always been filled with danger and it will continue to be. You’re smart enough and capable enough to navigate the dangers and still enjoy great fulfillment.

Some risks are foolish and others are well worth taking. Get clear about what you intend, and you’ll learn as you go what risks are appropriate for you.

Recognize your fears and pay attention to what they tell you. At the same time, don’t allow fear to immobilize you.

The courage to act in the face of fear is well within your reach. Summon that courage by reminding yourself of what you must do to support and nurture all you love and care about.

With purpose and intention, you can handle the fear. And with love and courage, live your life.

— Ralph Marston

That reading deserved one big gigantic amen:1: