Daily Motivator - April
 

April 1

The best place to be

You are not where you think you should be. You are where you are.

But what if those two situations were the same? What if you could accept that your current reality exactly matches your current ideal?

In that case, all your resentment would be replaced with gratitude. The energy of your disappointment would be transformed into the energy of determination.

You would not feel stuck, would not feel hindered by your circumstances. Instead, you’d feel energized to improve upon those circumstances, to envision and follow an ambitious pathway to fulfillment.

You would not waste time wondering where you went wrong. You would be able to see all sorts of opportunities for moving forward.

The fact is, this is the place where you actually are, the only place from which you can now make progress. Perhaps it’s best to simply allow yourself to do just that.

— Ralph Marston

April 2

Let your ambition come forward

It’s not selfish to move forward with ambition. What’s selfish is to waste time, skills, opportunities, and resources on aimless diversions.

You deserve a purposeful day, year, life. What’s more, you owe it to all those who sacrificed throughout history to make your opportunities possible.

It’s not easy to zero in on a worthy and compelling purpose. It’s more difficult still to follow that purpose with commitment and determination.

Yet what’s worse is to languish without any driving purpose. And then the regret for doing so can be unbearable.

Fortunately, there’s always plenty of good work to be done. Life, awareness, ability, and passion are yours to put to use.

Let your ambition come forward, and make yourself of continuing benefit to who and what you care about. Be the positive presence and force you are destined to be.

— Ralph Marston

Happy April the 1st my dear friends.
Thanking our Heavenly Father
For getting us though the
month of March one day at a time.
And for that I'm full of Gratitude and
Thanksgiving. Amen.

April 3

Experience that you can

Start what you’re a little bit afraid to do, and follow it through to completion. Discover a reservoir of strength you never knew you had.

Then move on to another activity that brings a little more trepidation. Work your way through it and feel the reality of heightened and authentic confidence you’ve just created.

It’s easy to tell yourself you can’t do something. It’s a whole lot more powerful to experience that you can.

The easy things to do are also easy to forget. The difficult, challenging, somewhat frightening experiences become stories you carry and treasure and share for life.

Do you want a day you’ll forget about tomorrow? Or would you rather create meaningful substance that will endure for years?

Remind yourself that yes, you can. Then prove to yourself that it’s true.

— Ralph Marston

April 4

Potential of today

You’ve put much effort and experience toward getting to this day. Make the way you live it worth all the trouble.

Today is an opportunity created for you by all those who came before you, and supported by those who now surround you. Make something good and useful and lasting out of the opportunity.

The future begins today for everyone you care about, for everyone who impacts your life, and for you. Live the moments of this day so as to create value that endures into the future.

You have your challenges and the world has its problems, but those are not reasons to sell yourself short. On the contrary, they’re good reasons to work for positive results every chance you get.

So much has gone into where you are and what you can do. This is when you can create real and significant value from it.

The great potential of today is only here for a short while. Act on it now.

— Ralph Marston

April 5

Disciplined and sober

Is it really so urgent? Most of the time, no.

Is it really such a disaster? In the majority of cases, probably not.

Is it really so indispensable, so desirable, so necessary? Sometimes, but not always.

Your attention is easily captivated by whatever presents itself as dramatic and insistent. Yet your life is almost always better served by what’s reasonable, measured, disciplined and sober.

Enjoy the exciting moments and experiences. But don’t deny yourself the massive value found in what’s steady and ordinary.

Indulge in a little drama every now and then. Just be careful not to let it overwhelm all you do.

— Ralph Marston

April 6

Middle ground

Just because it’s not a perfect experience doesn’t mean it’s a bad experience. Just because people do not completely agree with you doesn’t mean they hate you.

Most situations are not all one way in a particular dimension or all the opposite way. A great portion of life is lived in the middle ground.

Certainly extremes do exist. Yet it’s likely at most times that what you’re experiencing is not one of them.

When you make a couple of serious mistakes, it can feel like you’re unable to do anything right. But that’s not even remotely true, because the vast majority of your actions are successful at creating the results you intend.

In the same way, if you chalk up a few major wins, that can make you feel infallible. Yet when you give in to that feeling and assume you cannot lose, you’re setting yourself up for reckless overconfidence and disappointing results.

Instead, make the assumption that whatever you’re experiencing falls somewhere in the middle, and that you can move in a positive direction from wherever you are. See the problems for what they are, find the good that’s certainly there, and navigate your way forward no matter what.

— Ralph Marston

April 7

Forgotten options

You have good options that you’re not exercising. How do you put yourself in a place where you can see them?

Most of the time those options remain hidden behind your assumptions and habitual routines. It’s helpful to occasionally take a break from those routines, to question those assumptions.

Imagine another person looking at your life from a radically different perspective. What would that person see?

What resources, connections, opportunities, and skills would that person observe? What bodies of knowledge, what interests, what values would that person be able to detect?

In your life you’ve made lots of choices, and once you choose a particular option you tend to forget about all the others. But many of those options are still available to you and might be more attractive now.

Get a little curious about the options you’ve forgotten or never even realized you had. You might even find some that can change your life.

— Ralph Marston

April 8

Choice of attitude

What’s your attitude today? It’s whatever attitude you choose.

What’s your attitude when something goes wrong, when everything works out great, when people are rude, when they’re kind? Again, your attitude is what you choose it to be.

You can be the best version of you no matter what happens to you or around you. What determines the way you are, how you think, speak, and act, is you.

Yes, you must interact with and respond to people and events in the real world. Yet you can always do so effectively while staying in control of your own attitude.

Your choice of attitude is a major factor in your level of success. Make your choice with that in mind, not as a momentary reaction but as a solid, stable foundation.

Choose an attitude that energizes you, enables you, and pushes you into rewarding behavior. Your attitude is yours to decide right now, so decide on the best.

— Ralph Marston

April 9

Tend your own garden

As enticing as the prospect may be, there’s not much you can do to control or influence the behavior of others. Yet there are plenty of improvements you can make to your own thoughts, choices, and actions.

It’s great to keep yourself informed about what the rest of the people in the world are doing. But it’s best to keep the majority of your focus and energy on the good and useful things you can do.

Tend to your own garden with care, discipline, persistence and high expectations. That will accomplish infinitely more than scrutinizing and complaining about the weeds in your neighbor’s garden.

A modest positive change in your choices can often lead to a massive improvement in the quality of your life. By contrast, fighting to control the choices of others will likely just lead to more and more fighting.

Even if you could somehow get everyone in the world to do as you wish, that would not come close to solving your problems. And then where would you turn?

The most powerful, positive, and far-reaching way to influence your world is by example. Work toward excellence in the living of your life, and let your success inspire others to do the same.

— Ralph Marston

Happy Easter my dear friends.

Happy Easter to you and everyone!

April 10

Live life now

If you can’t enjoy and appreciate now you can’t enjoy ever. If you’re not grateful for whatever you have you make it impossible to have whatever you desire.

This is life now. Give your love, attention, focus and effort to it, now.

Certainly you can name many ways that things could be better. Yet the point from which you must start to make those improvements is now.

Treasure all the good you’ve experienced in the past. But don’t long endlessly for it to return, because it won’t.

Look forward to the potential rewards that the future will bring. But don’t wish that you could instantly jump there because that would trivialize those rewards and make them worthless.

Live life now, with all its memories, all its possibilities, all its challenges, all its opportunities. Do something great and meaningful with the immense potential that now surrounds you.

— Ralph Marston

April 11

Power of purpose

Give your attention not only to what you do and how you do it. Seek also to understand and to be clear about why.

There is great power in purpose. Purpose energizes your actions and sustains your efforts.

Purpose provides a specific direction in which to apply your time, skills, knowledge, and passion. Purpose enables you to create meaningful value and to live a fulfilling life.

At any point during the day, your life is either lining up with a purpose you care deeply about, or it is not. By asking why, and by persisting until you have an answer, you direct yourself toward true richness.

Purpose is not always easy to understand or to follow. Yet a purposeful life is ultimately preferable to the alternative.

Why do you love what you love, and do what you do, and desire what you desire? Get clear about purpose, and spread the power of that purpose throughout your world.

— Ralph Marston

April 12

Make the choices work

Achievement not only requires that you make certain choices. Achievement requires that you make the choices work.

Intention alone is not sufficient, no matter how much passion is behind it. Reality will remain firmly the way it is until you put forth time, energy, and skill to change it.

It’s great that you can tap on the image of some product you desire and have that product show up in your life before the day is over. Such experiences, repeated again and again, can give you the impression that the world bends to your mere will.

But of course that is not the case. And to allow yourself such a fantasy is to set yourself up for extreme disappointment.

There is much value that you can experience and enjoy. Yet as much value as reality offers, you cannot ever dependably benefit from value you have not earned.

Choose with care what you truly desire for yourself, your family, your community, your world. Then step up and do the work needed to bring those choices to life.

— Ralph Marston

April 13

Each moment as it comes

Give less attention to what frustrates you and more attention to what fulfills you. Give less attention to what angers you and more attention to what nourishes you.

Give less time to empty distractions and more time to enriching experiences. Expend less energy seeking approval and more energy creating value.

Embrace the true adventure of navigating a meaningful path through a world filled with challenge, risk, complexity, and beauty. Steer clear of the superficial dramas and all the nonsense that masquerades as sophistication.

Be endlessly thankful for your deftness in recognizing what is possible. Have confidence in your ability to understand what is good, and right, and worth the investment of your attentiveness.

Appreciate the fact that many of the limitations making existence difficult also make existence possible. Keep in mind that there is a whole universe outside your mind, that you must do your best to learn to live in it.

With gratitude, with humility, with purpose, with love, face each moment as it comes. With a devotion to truth and authenticity, live well.

— Ralph Marston

April 14

Life changes

By very definition, life does not stand still. Whatever you’re not working to improve, time and circumstance are busy eroding.

You are in some ways different today than you were yesterday. Tomorrow you’ll be a little different than today.

You will change, the world around you will change, and there’s no getting away from that. What you can do is embrace the changes and do your best to push them in a positive direction.

That’s one reason gratitude is so beneficial to your life. Gratitude shines a bright light on what’s valuable and enables you to build upon that value.

Changes can be painful and frightening, yet they also open up new opportunities. Instead of wishing in vain that the changes would stop, look for how you and others can work to benefit from those inevitable changes.

Life changes, and with each change comes some positive potential. Choose to make the most of that potential, and do what you can to change life for the better.

— Ralph Marston

April 15

True sharing

Rather than sharing memes, share reality. Share your presence, your time, your experiences, your kindness.

True sharing heals hearts, inspires new strength, brings purpose to the forefront. And true sharing cannot be accomplished by merely tapping on a screen.

Share your stories face to face. Remember that listening is an important part of sharing too.

Sharing connects, empowers, informs. Whether sharing effort, expertise, joy, or grief, sharing can be of great value.

The more of yourself you put into what you share, the better. Sharing can make an ordinary experience into one that’s treasured for a lifetime.

Lives are richest when they offer benefit to and receive benefit from each other. True sharing is an excellent way to live.

— Ralph Marston

April 16

Loving benefactor

By all means keenly observe the world and make note of the things that can be improved. But take care not to internalize the entire deficit between life as it is and life as it could be.

You are a part of all that is. But the good you can do, as extensive as it may be, does not depend on you absorbing every burden that exists.

Your best hope of repairing what is broken is to operate from a perspective that’s apart from what is broken. Healing flows not from sickness, but from health.

Feel that healthy part of you, focus on it, celebrate it, and expand upon it. Rather than letting the problems of the world pull you down, live with so much goodness as to overwhelm them.

You have a great responsibility to yourself and to all of life. Yet that does not oblige you to agonize endlessly over every last one of life’s imperfections.

Every day, in every situation, you can make a meaningful positive difference. Seek to do so not as a grieving victim, but as a joyful, confident, and loving benefactor.

— Ralph Marston

Sharing is also caring. Pain shared is also pain lessen.

April 17

Intellectual humility

From the past you can gain some insights about the future. But just because you went through an experience once does not make you an expert on all the ways it could unfold next time.

Over the course of your life you’ve accumulated a great amount of useful knowledge. Yet it’s impossible for you to know everything about every subject.

It’s good when you can be realistically confident about particular issues and situations. It’s just as good to know and admit when you’re puzzled, when you don’t have sufficient experience or information.

Make good use of your knowledge and experience. Don’t waste your energy pretending to know more than you know.

If you have what seems like a stupid question, ask that question of someone who is likely to know the answer. Questions that seem stupid are actually very smart, because they often lead to a fundamental understanding.

No one is born with expertise about everything. Don’t let your ego get in the way of increasing your knowledge and wisdom with each passing day.

— Ralph Marston

April 17

Intellectual humility

From the past you can gain some insights about the future. But just because you went through an experience once does not make you an expert on all the ways it could unfold next time.

Over the course of your life you’ve accumulated a great amount of useful knowledge. Yet it’s impossible for you to know everything about every subject.

It’s good when you can be realistically confident about particular issues and situations. It’s just as good to know and admit when you’re puzzled, when you don’t have sufficient experience or information.

Make good use of your knowledge and experience. Don’t waste your energy pretending to know more than you know.

If you have what seems like a stupid question, ask that question of someone who is likely to know the answer. Questions that seem stupid are actually very smart, because they often lead to a fundamental understanding.

No one is born with expertise about everything. Don’t let your ego get in the way of increasing your knowledge and wisdom with each passing day.

— Ralph Marston

April 18

New territory and old routines

You find comfort sticking with your routine. But too much of the same routine will numb your spirit and mind.

It’s great when you can build and maintain a solid, stable structure to support your life. From that base you can add vibrance and energy by making regular forays into new territory.

Both the reliable routines and the challenging novelties can bring you value. See your life as an intentionally mediated balance between what you can depend on and what will compel you to grow.

Make it your choice to benefit from what you’ve never before experienced as well as from what you continue to experience. Bring treasures from home out into the world and bring treasures from the wider world back home.

When your existence feels too predictable, shake it up with something new. When things seem overly chaotic, seek refuge in the people, places, and activities you know and love.

Find strength in what endures and energy in what is new. Continue to enrich your life and your world with a healthy balance of both.

— Ralph Marston

April 19

Acknowledge reality

You are a participant in reality whether you acknowledge it or not. Your best option is to acknowledge it.

In your own mind, with your words, perhaps even with your actions, you can deny reality to various degrees. But what beneficial result can that possibly achieve?

Sure, you can envision a more favorable version of reality. Yet as desirable and compelling as that vision might be, it’s only a vision until you act to make it real.

And current reality is the ground upon which you’re able to act. You must acknowledge the world as it is if you’re to have any possibility of transforming it into the world you want it to be.

You can find ideas, inspiration, insight in fantasy. Nonetheless, where you live, where you can make a difference, is in reality.

Be eager to open your eyes and see that this is your reality. Now, get to work doing beautiful, useful, life-affirming things with it.

— Ralph Marston

April 20

Intentional focus

Do you seek to utilize the power of focus? Then get your priorities straight.

To focus on one thing is to ignore all the other things. That can be costly because many of those other things have value.

Focus involves an intentional choice. What is important enough to focus on to the exclusion of all else?

Know specifically what you can afford to ignore for a while, and why. You’re paying a price for focus, so be sure to get sufficient value in return.

Second-guessing your choice to focus will erode that focus. Be certain of your commitment to that choice, and give your focus power, stamina, resilience.

Where you direct your focus is a serious and potentially life-changing choice. Choose honestly with yourself, and wisely.

— Ralph Marston

April 21

Tradition

You can learn a good bit from your own experience. You can learn vastly more from the experience of others.

Many values, customs and traditions are seen as antiquated, and most are indeed older than anyone can remember. But just because they’re ancient doesn’t mean they’re naive or unsophisticated or worthless.

You’re remarkably more informed today than any person who lived a thousand years ago. But can you really claim to possess more wisdom than the accumulated wisdom of all the people who have lived since that time?

That massive amount of experience-based wisdom has formed and refined the stories and values now considered traditional. It would be the height of arrogance to dismiss those traditions out of hand.

Certainly people in the past were fallible and made plenty of mistakes. That’s precisely why it can be so valuable to consider and understand the truths that still survive from their experiences.

Put in the work to improve upon what has come from the past. But don’t discard the past altogether, for that would be foolish indeed.

— Ralph Marston

April 22

Fulfill the promise

This is the day when you can live your experience. Here is the place where you will make a difference.

Now is the moment when you transform intention into action. The spot where you stand is your place to start.

It can be tempting to wait until later, but later never really gets here. The richness of life is always lived in the time that is, in the place you are, with the conditions you have.

Those conditions will never be perfect. Yet they are always sufficient and accessible, ready for you to act upon.

Invite yourself to be filled with gratitude and amazement at the extent of opportunity that’s now yours to seize. Give yourself a little push and initiate the momentum that can be.

Here you are with possibility all around you. Fulfill the great promise of the moment you’re in.

— Ralph Marston

April 23

Give yourself time

Give yourself time to think. Give yourself time to focus on your work.

Give yourself time to recover. Give yourself time to heal.

Give yourself time to be with those who matter most to you. Give yourself time to get lost in doing the things you love.

Give yourself time to explore the wonder of life and existence. Give yourself time for the things that challenge you to become stronger.

Give yourself time to relax. Give yourself time to wonder.

Give yourself time to appreciate and to express that appreciation. Give yourself time to truly live.

— Ralph Marston

April 24

Abundance of living

Fill the day, fill the season, fill your life with life. This moment is your opportunity to do what you haven’t already done in previous moments.

Take that opportunity and make the most of it. Add new dimensions of richness to your experience, to your world.

Sure, there are tasks that are important to repeat, or enjoyable and fulfilling to engage in again and again. Even so, you can always add new experiences, new challenges, new ideas, relationships and activities along the way.

Doing so intensifies your energy level, broadens your understanding, brings freshness and zest to life. It enables you to taste a whole range of possibilities.

You can’t say yes to everything, nor would you want to. Yet there are plenty of new directions that it’s appropriate and worthwhile for you to explore.

Give to yourself an abundance of living. Continue to discover how full and rich life can be.

— Ralph Marston

April 25

Adventure that is yours

It can be valuable to make certain tasks and activities easier. But ease for the sake of ease does not sustain a fulfilling life.

By removing all the challenge from an undertaking, you can end up trivializing it. Do that too often, with too many of life’s pursuits, and life itself can appear to be trivialized.

You are not merely what you do. Yet what you do has a significant impact on who you are, on the quality of life you experience.

Risk, challenge, and uncertainty are not pleasant, but neither are they unequivocal enemies of your existence. Indeed, it is in dealing with the hard stuff that you gain access to and appreciation for much of the good stuff.

Your best stories are the ones in which you face adversities of some kind and emerge with a deeper well of strength. Real adventure is necessarily difficult and precarious, and is also essential to your sense of who you are.

Pay heed to the wisdom of your fears. But don’t be afraid to live all the adventure that is yours to live.

— Ralph Marston

April 26

Earning your way

You get what you pay for. You get what you work for.

If you’re not willing or able to invest in it, you’ll eventually find yourself disappointed by it. What you can give your work, your attention, your care, time, and resources to you can have some reasonable hope of being able to depend upon.

A free ride is not a good ride. A free lunch is not really a thing.

That’s actually great news. Because the necessity of earning your way is among life’s best opportunities.

By very definition, to experience a meaningful life you must fill your life with meaning. What demands the best of you is what engenders the best within you.

In this place, using whatever constitutes this moment, with your energy, intention, and love, make value. And join in as life benefits from the fruits of your efforts.

— Ralph Marston

April 27

Learn from this

Learn from this. Then act on what you learn.

Understand what went wrong and what went right. But rather than bragging or complaining, seek to apply your insights.

Find effective solutions to the problems you’ve identified. Work to expand and to build upon the successes you’ve enjoyed.

You’ve paid for your experience with time, effort, and resources. Now make good and thoughtful use of that experience.

Sweep aside any inklings of resentment, arrogance, anger, or complacence. Instead, set an ambitious goal informed by what you’ve been through, and work to make it happen.

You promised yourself that next time you’ll do better. Now, next time is here.

— Ralph Marston

There no better time then right now.

April 28

Best face forward

Think beyond the moment. Consider beyond the immediate transaction.

It may require a little more of your time, effort and resources to be reliable, friendly, helpful. Yet by doing so you’re investing in the long term, working to build relationships that can be of great value.

Be polite when you don’t need to be, and honest when no one is looking. In every encounter, in every choice, encourage habits within yourself that gain you the trust and genuine respect of others.

Not everyone will respond positively to your kindness and integrity, but don’t let that discourage you. Because the people who do resonate with such behavior have the potential to bring great value into your life.

For better or for worse, your reputation matters, and your reputation is not based on what you want it to be. Your reputation comes from what you do, again and again, consistently, year after year.

Even the smallest interactions make a big difference in the way the world sees you. Put your best, most authentically helpful face forward every chance you get.

— Ralph Marston

April 29

One day at a time

Day after day you live your life. And day after day is when you can make progress.

Walk a few miles one day, then again the next day, and the next. One day you’ll turn around and realize you’ve covered thousands of miles.

You cannot do everything in life all at once. Yet you can fill each day, and the next, and the one after that.

Very soon it begins to add up. Achievement comes one day, one step, one action, one advancement at a time.

If you’re in a hurry, there are limits to what you can do, or have, or experience. Give it more time, though, more consistent effort, and many of those limits fall away.

Where do you truly want to go? Life goes where you take it, one day at a time.

— Ralph Marston

April 30

Live for you and yours

Did you hear the latest? Are you up to date on everything that happened five minutes ago?

Or, did you instead take a thoughtful and peaceful walk in the woods? Have you reached out and re-connected with a good friend from long ago?

It’s very easy to spend large chunks of each day obsessing over the endless stream of headlines, tweets and videos. Yes, it keeps you constantly in the know, but at the end of the day that doesn’t get you much.

It’s helpful to be aware of what’s going on in the world. Yet what matters much more is the living of your life, in the moment, where you are, with richness and meaning.

The celebrity scandal of the hour might be somewhat interesting. But spending time with a good book written 150 years ago can profoundly improve your life.

Your attention has massive, irreplaceable value, and it makes a great difference where you direct it. Choose to direct it so as to live for you and for all those who truly matter to you.

— Ralph Marston