Daily Motivator - April

[bluidkiti]

April 1

Cover the distance

There’s a certain distance between the life you envision and the life you are living. You can make use of today to close some of that distance.

There’s a certain distance between what you know you’re capable of doing, and what you’re actually doing. Right now you can make the distance a little smaller.

The way to traverse any distance is not to curse that distance. Choose instead to cover the distance, as much as you can, as often as necessary.

No journey of any significance has ever been completed in an instant. Cover the distance, a few inches at a time, a mile or two, a couple of days or weeks, as you can.

Between where you are and where you want to be, there is a specific distance. Work to cover that distance by taking specific action, in a consistent direction.

You have what it takes to make the distance less, and then less, and less again. Keep covering the distance, and you’ll get there.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 2

Maximize your positive impact

As soon as you begin the work, begin also to improve on the work. Observe what’s going wrong, what’s going right, and adjust accordingly.

Don’t use being busy as an excuse for being ineffective. Make the effort, and make the effort bring results.

Just because you are occupied doesn’t mean you are making progress. Stay busy, and look for signs to confirm you’re moving forward, not merely running in place.

It’s admirable and useful to push through your own frustration. Yet when you’re repeatedly encountering frustration, figure out a more effective approach.

You’re investing irreplaceable time and skillful effort, so don’t invest wastefully. Seek to maximize your positive impact and expand the value you’re able to create.

Do the work, and hold your work to a high standard. Don’t let yourself do any less than the best you can do.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 3

Live with sincerity and substance

You don’t have to have an opinion on every latest controversy. You can live your life perfectly well without even knowing about most of them.

Indeed, there are so many much better directions in which to focus your attention. Your life is longing to be richly lived, not to be tediously argued about.

If you’re eager to assert your perspective, to make a statement, make it with the way you live. That has far greater power than crafting the most highly persuasive argument.

Avoid falling into an obsession over things about which you can do nothing other than speculate and disagree. Challenge yourself to put your time and energy into truly meaningful pursuits.

Seek to live with sincerity and substance. Discover new ways to act on your values rather than merely proclaiming them.

Look beyond the petty bickering and see the possibilities to make life better for everyone. Focus yourself on bringing those possibilities to life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 4

Fill the emptiness

Without the possibility of silence, there could be no sound. Without emptiness, there would be no fulfillment.

When you sense emptiness what you’re actually feeling is the potential, the ability, to create. See emptiness not as a lack or an absence, but as the opportunity it is.

Empty spaces in your life provide you with space to live. The empty spaces are yours to fill with goodness, experience, value, love, and meaning.

Silence gives you the opportunity to speak, to express life in your own unique way. Darkness gives you a place to shine your own special light.

See that each empty moment is a treasure. It is yours to fill with meaningful and creative life.

When nothing is there, everything is possible. Embrace the opportunity in silence, in emptiness, in darkness, and make it into something beautiful.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 5

What do you want?

What do you want? Really, specifically, sincerely, what do you want to be, to have, to experience in your life?

How often do you ask yourself that question, and how clear are you with the answer? Because the degree to which you are clear and detailed about what you seek, determines precisely how successful you will be.

You can create what you truly desire, yet you must have a highly developed, detailed picture of what that is. You are absolutely able to have what you want if you’re willing to know and understand exactly what it is.

It is not some magical, mysterious process. It is simply a matter of directing your life, disciplining yourself to take certain specific actions and to avoid others.

The motivation to do so is not found in some clever technique that’s known only to a select few. That motivation is found in knowing what you genuinely want, and keeping that knowledge, that aim, at the front of your awareness.

Achievement is highly difficult and requires massive commitment. Amazingly, you can do it, and you will, as long as you’re clear about exactly what you seek to achieve.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 6

Improve the moment

Here’s what you can always do. Improve the moment.

You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. You don’t have to lay out some grand scheme or gain access to a lot of resources.

Simply look around, see what will help, and do it. With love, with humility, with gratitude, improve the moment.

Surely you can spot one or two improvements that will make life a little better. Take the opportunity you have right now, and improve the moment.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to make a big deal about it. Quietly, steadfastly take it upon yourself to improve the moment.

Show life, in a practical and friendly way, how it can be better. With good cheer and enthusiasm, every chance you get, improve the moment.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 7

Choose wisely

Your choices brought you here. Your choices can now take you wherever you wish to go.

Nobody gets it perfect all the time. Yet you can learn from what did go right and from what went wrong, making your choices more and more informed and beneficial.

It may seem there are times when no one is watching the choices you make, but that is not the case. Because your future self is watching every choice.

And soon, your future self is going to be either very disappointed or extremely grateful for the specific choices you are making now. Today is your opportunity to make the choices your future self will thank you for.

Your choices combine with and expand upon each other to define the path your life follows. Consistently choose in a way that makes it a path to joy and fulfillment rather than a path to regret and despair.

Whatever your choices in the past have been, your choices now can move you precisely in the direction of the life you desire. Remind yourself all day long, in every situation, to choose wisely.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 8

Work to do

You’re not as good as you could be. You have much potential that is yet to be realized.

Though you’ve come a long way, you still have work to do. You still have much value to bring to life.

The most valuable thing you’ve achieved so far is the opportunity to achieve more. Take up that opportunity, with the highest expectations, and go forward with it.

The sense of meaning you feel in your life comes from the time, energy, thoughts, and actions you’ve invested to date. Now you have the chance to deepen and enrich that meaning.

As your best possibilities are fulfilled through your effort, even better possibilities arise to take their place. Ponder that glorious truth, and revel in the opportunity it represents.

Have the vision, live the courage, do the work that enables your potential to unfold into achievement. There’s always meaningful work to be done, and that’s what makes life so great to live.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 9

Something you can give

What you give to life, is what gives your life meaning. The challenges you face, the work you do, the commitments you honor, create substance in your life.

On the surface, in the moment, the most comfortable choice seems like the best choice. Yet in the long run, in the overall picture of your life and its meaning, the most challenging choice is likely the best.

As you go through this day, keep in mind that you’ll soon be looking back on the choices you are making. Will you look back with gratitude for the meaning and substance you added to your life, or with regret for opportunities missed?

Making a positive difference in life is not about looking good or garnering praise. It is about living well, giving of yourself, with a strong sense of meaning and purpose.

In each moment, there’s some little something you can do that will make life a bit better. There’s something you can give that will deepen your sense of positive purpose.

Give often in the direction of your highest vision of what is good and right. It adds up to a meaningful life, well lived.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 10

What’s inside

You can’t always control what arrives at your life’s doorstep. Yet you can choose how far to let it in, and what to do with it once it’s inside.

You certainly will not avoid every problem, and you wouldn’t want to anyway. Because problems push you to grow stronger, and give you access to new opportunities.

Yet no matter how many problems you encounter, or how big they are, they never have to get to the heart of who you are. You never have to allow any of the problems to define your life.

You can respond to every difficulty with fresh, new determination. You can build new strength and hold on to it, while letting go of any impulse to become cynical or discouraged.

What’s outside is what you often must deal with. What’s inside is up to you to choose.

Your attitude, your perspective, your inner hopes, dreams, and faith are yours to decide. As life unfolds, let each experience add positive value to the deepest, most enduring part of you that truly matters.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 11

Old treasures

What treasures do you have in your life that you’ve forgotten you have? What good things did you set aside for a while, and neglected to come back to?

Whatever held your love, curiosity, or fascination years ago could still have much to offer you. There was a good reason why it once was part of your life, and that reason might be even more powerful now.

A book you first read years ago may now hold much more meaning. An old friend from whom you’ve grown apart could now have much more in common with you.

Subjects that interested you when you were much younger still have a message for you today. Perhaps it would pay to think back, and to take another look.

Just because some things are old and familiar does not mean they are irrelevant. Now, with the advantage of time and experience, perhaps you can find deeper meaning and value in a few of those things.

Life’s ongoing urgencies and compromises have likely covered up some treasures that still are somewhere within you. Give yourself a chance to rediscover and reconnect with them.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 12

Circumstances don’t care

Your circumstances are not able to know or to care what you think about them. Your circumstances do not respond at all to the way you feel about them.

As such, your complaints, your anger, your anxiety will not convince your circumstances to change. Those responses will only deplete your energy and diminish your effectiveness.

Though you can’t convince your circumstances to change, you can inspire yourself to change in the face of difficult circumstances. You can act to improve those circumstances, or improve how you deal with them, or both.

There’s no point in being angry when your anger is not even going to be noticed. You have much more powerful and effective options.

Consider, honestly and realistically, what you can actually do, then commit yourself to following through with it. Direct your energy and your actions where they will make a positive difference.

Your circumstances don’t care what you think or feel, but your situation will respond to what you do about it. Take the smart approach, and invest your energy where it will have the most beneficial impact.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 13

Timely action

It is difficult to discipline your child when he is two years old. But it is much, much easier and more effective to do so than to wait until he is fourteen.

It is an inconvenience and an expense to get the engine oil changed in your car. Yet it is a far bigger expense and much greater inconvenience when the car stops running due to a lack of maintenance.

There is some small problem you can address right now that will prevent a much bigger problem in the future. Identify it, admit it, and deal with it.

Perhaps you’ve already waited too long, but that’s no reason to put it off even longer. Speak up now, take action today, get it behind you before it gets even worse.

Instead of pretending that everything is okay, take the steps that will actually make everything okay. There is so much good you can do, so many tragedies you can avoid, if you will simply act in a timely manner.

Face the difficulties, and you render them less difficult. Be eager to put your strength to use, and you’ll thank yourself for all the greater troubles you avoid.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 14

Future vision

Any concept you have of the future is just a simulation in your mind. It can be extremely useful to consider how life could unfold, as long as you don’t let it overwhelm and disable you.

Go ahead, peer inquisitively into the future. Learn all you can, and then come solidly back into the present.

Sometimes you can anticipate very accurately what’s going to happen. You can make good use of that knowledge to guide your life in a more positive direction.

Many other times, events do not unfold at all like you thought. So don’t get yourself too invested in what, after all, is your own speculation.

Instead, seek to combine your vision of the future with the undeniable reality of now. Apply your best guesses about tomorrow in ways that make a positive difference today.

Don’t be dismayed by problems that only exist in your imagined future. Be inspired to create so much value right now that those problems never have a chance to appear.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

April 15

Whatever is at hand

What is it about whatever just happened, that you can make good use of? What constitutes this moment, this situation, that can be of benefit to yourself and others?

Being positive is not a matter of wishing or pretending for life to be good. Rather, it is digging the best outcomes out of even the worst circumstances.

It’s easy to pick the low-hanging fruit, but that usually gets taken very quickly. Sustainable success means extracting value that’s not immediately obvious.

There’s something about this day, this place, this environment, that you can transform into richness. Look at the small details, at the big picture, in context, out of context, and find the potential value that’s surely there.

The treasure with which you fill life is not pre-defined. You can make as much of it as you choose, in any flavors you wish, out of whatever is at hand.

Surprise and delight yourself with your own resourcefulness. Discover again and again how good it feels to find meaning and beauty where no one ever saw it before.

— Ralph Marston