Daily Motivator - March
 

March 1

Room for improvement

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Ralph Marston

March 2

Meaningful progress

You have the opportunity to exchange this day for some real progress. Yet if you wish to do it, you must begin right away.

The day’s obligations weigh on you, and you’re reminded of many other things you’d rather be doing. But you know resentment, avoidance, and procrastination are not the answer.

What will help you most is to get some good work done. What will make this day one you’ll be thankful for, is to make productive use of its time.

Start with the task that challenges you most, the one you’d prefer to avoid. Push yourself through until you have it done, and see how much better you feel.

With that positive feeling as inspiration, keep going, keep making a difference. Soon, you’ll have your work done, having put your time and energy to good use.

And you’ll remind yourself that the obligations are really not such a burden. For they enable you to enjoy the satisfaction of making meaningful progress.

— Ralph Marston

March 3

Impulsive

Let your impulses inform you, maybe even inspire you. But don’t let them control you.

Impulses are honest, transparent, authentic. They show you what you desire, care about, fear, and it’s valuable to know those things.

Yet impulses have their pitfalls too, often serious ones. They have little consideration for anything outside the current moment, and that can certainly be a problem.

Appreciate your impulses for what they are, for what they can show you about yourself and your possibilities. But always remember, you don’t have to automatically do whatever those impulses urge.

When you feel an impulse, give yourself a moment to get beyond the initial heat of desire. Consider the future consequences of acting on your impulse and ask yourself, is it really what you want?

Every now and then an impulse can radically change life for the better, but many are best left unheeded. Use your power to choose which impulses you act upon, and which ones to leave behind.

— Ralph Marston

March 4

Deep beauty

Every life, at any time, in whatever situation, carries within it a deep beauty. Far removed from the outer turmoil and drama, lives pure, miraculous beauty.

Even when ignored for years, it waits, watches, learns, grows more beautiful. Any moment you surrender what doesn’t really matter, that beauty draws closer to the surface.

Intertwined with deep beauty is your truth, your ideal vision of life. Every sadness, disappointment, pain, you feel because of its distance from that ideal.

As you bridge that distance, you experience peace, sublime joy, gratitude for all you have and all that is. Your capacity to love grows stronger, more generous and confident.

Your deep beauty makes no logical sense, and you’ll never fully understand it. Yet you cannot ever deny it.

And if you allow it, your deep beauty can increasingly fill life with its value. Moment by moment, know it, appreciate it, and allow it.

— Ralph Marston

March 5

Extraordinary influence

You have extraordinary influence over your experience of life. Because you decide what to notice, what to care about, what to do.

You can find great inspiration in the smallest of things. You can discover new levels of joy and enrichment in even the most ordinary task.

You can see possibilities that a million people might have passed by and never noticed. You can apply your thoughts, time, and efforts to bring those possibilities to life.

Life is not something that happens to you. Life is something that happens through you.

Your attitude, your preferences, your willingness, your fortitude, all contribute to the life you experience. And if your choices ever fail to serve you well, you can replace them with even better ones.

The days ahead, the years to come, will depend largely on the way your choices make them. Challenge yourself enough, love yourself enough, to make them the best you can imagine.

— Ralph Marston

March 6

Willing to change

You won’t solve a problem by continuing the same behavior that caused it. That seems like an obvious truth, yet it is ignored every day.

It’s tempting to think that some magic factor can create the results you want without any disruption in your routine. Yet reality is not so convenient.

If you seek a different destination, you must follow a different path. Hope is a powerful motivator, but hope alone is a poor strategy.

The first step in successfully solving a problem is to take full responsibility for it. The next step is to immediately stop doing whatever caused the problem in the first place.

Then, once you’re no longer sliding backwards, figure out a workable way forward. Transformation is available to you when you choose to invest yourself in it, when you’re willing to change.

Rather than cursing your fate, instead of empty wishes, act to make a difference. Be willing to change, and go in a direction that leaves the problem far behind.

— Ralph Marston

March 7

Image of yourself

How do you imagine yourself to be? Imagination alone won’t make it happen, yet it does guide your expectations and actions.

See yourself as struggling, and you’ll continue to struggle. See yourself as achieving, and you’ll continue to achieve.

Decide to have respect for yourself, and you’ll find yourself doing what is respectable. Choose to feel confident, and your efforts all benefit from that confidence.

Talk positively to yourself, and discover how encouraging and empowering it can be. Step forward with faith in your abilities, and you’ll find yourself working to earn that faith.

Your image of yourself plays a major role in your goals, your plans, your levels of determination and success. Make that image the best you can imagine.

Think highly of yourself. With how you live, with how you act, continually give yourself plenty of good reasons to think that way.

— Ralph Marston

March 8

Worth your effort

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Ralph Marston

March 9

Advance new goodness

Make up your mind to make life better. Dedicate yourself to advance new goodness in the world.

Recognize the challenges, and plot your course beyond them. Let distractions, disruptions, and deceptions deepen your sense of determination.

Although life is not easy, you can continue to make it good. Even in a fog of confusion and turmoil, you can forge ahead to create new levels of meaning and fulfillment.

Draw strength from your connection to all you love and care about. Engage that strength to serve and promote those facets of life you value most.

Choose to grow more capable as you work through each situation. Increase your understanding, compassion, love and generosity with every encounter.

Now, on this day, with the world exactly as it is, decide to make life better. Then fulfill your highest potential by working to succeed at the task.

— Ralph Marston

March 10

Joys that can now be

Joy never leaves you, but all too often you can forget it was ever there. Are there joys you once treasured, that have faded from your awareness?

Now is a good time to reconnect yourself to them. This is when you can let those joys add new inspiration and positive energy to your life.

The moment you remember a joy, you have it again. Though time and circumstance have changed, every joy you ever knew is a joy you can continue to feel.

Alongside each joy lives the potential for even more joy. You would do well to explore the extent of that potential.

Your heart is not bound by time or distance. And your heart is always eager to be immersed in joy.

Give in to that desire. Surrender yourself to joys you’ve already known and joys that can now be.

— Ralph Marston

March 11

New energy

Observe the experience of who you are, without the need to understand or analyze. Allow your thoughts a peaceful pause.

Appreciate all that is, as it is. Now, isn’t that better?

Feel for the sake of feeling. Notice the gentle abiding strength of your own being.

Set your spirit free to sail beyond all that has ever threatened to confine it. Taste the joy of goodness that’s unhindered by any boundary or condition.

You are more than any limits can contain. Resonate with the essence in you that dwells in a realm where all is possible.

Bring some of those possibilities into the place where you are. With a fresh sense of purpose, give new energy to them, and to yourself as well.

— Ralph Marston

March 12

Push worry aside

You lack good information about what’s going on, and you’re not sure what to do. In such a situation, it can seem like your only option is to worry endlessly.

But worry is not a useful strategy. You absolutely have plenty of good things you can be doing instead.

You don’t know exactly what’s going on, or what will happen. So here’s a helpful question to ask yourself.

If trouble is indeed coming your way, what condition, what position would you prefer to be in when it finds you? And what positive actions can you take right now to get yourself to that place?

Worry is mostly a waste of good, usable time and energy. Push worry aside, and envision yourself meeting difficulty with strength, purpose, and preparation.

Then, direct your energy into well-reasoned actions that can make a difference, now and in the future. Though no one knows what that future will be, your best option for getting there is with action and strength, not worry.

— Ralph Marston

March 13

Greatly expanded view

You can change everything without changing a thing. Just choose to look at life from a higher perspective.

The way you see the situation shapes the way you respond to the situation. The way you respond determines how successful you are.

Possibilities are nearly limitless, yet you only have access to the ones you’re aware of. And your awareness is directly connected to your perspective.

It takes discipline and great effort to walk up the mountain. The reward you earn is a greatly expanded view.

Could you benefit from a better view, a more desirable set of options? Climb beyond the comfort of your current thoughts, feelings, and assumptions to a higher vantage.

Work to give yourself the benefit of a more expansive outlook on your world. Look at life from a higher perspective, and you’ll find plenty of great possibilities to see.

— Ralph Marston

March 14

Positive force

You cannot always choose everything about your circumstances. Yet you can choose your state of mind no matter what the circumstances may be.

Can you focus your awareness on something positive, right now? Can you think of all the good things, and people, and experiences, and values, that you are thankful for?

You can’t control all the things that will happen to you today. Yet you can absolutely control the person you will be today.

Every factor on the outside, good or bad, can fill you with fresh determination to live with joy in the inside. Feel that determination, and let it push you positively forward.

The world and all its problems can bring you down if you let it. But you always have another choice.

Choose to be a positive force, for yourself, for those around you, for this time and place, for the world. It’s a choice you always have the good fortune to make, and one that will lift all of life higher.

— Ralph Marston

March 15

Meaningful purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Ralph Marston

March 16

Positive intention

Give to yourself the time, the space, the discipline, the faith to grow stronger. And you will.

Allow yourself to heal, to learn, to let go, to forgive, to live. Offer honesty and patience to every moment, every circumstance.

Notice the doubts, the fears, and then see that you can rise above them. That you can face the unknown with confidence and positive intention.

Remember that wherever you find yourself, you can always stay pointed toward where you want to go. And even if it’s just one small step at a time, you can always keep going that direction.

Use your time in a purposeful way, and time will always be on your side. Utilize the ever-changing nature of life as your constant opportunity to change for the better.

Give energy and awareness to your highest possibilities. Give love to every day.

— Ralph Marston

March 17

Singular focus

The good things in your life deserve plenty of uninterrupted attention. Disconnect from the distractions, and connect to your highest potential.

Focus on what you are doing, really focus. You can achieve amazing things when you point all your energy in a specific direction.

Ego will trick you into thinking you need to be instantly notified, updated, available. Yet you can offer more value to life by dedicating long stretches of time to singular focus.

Wisdom is more than merely knowing every detail. Wisdom comes from taking the time to make sense of what you know and learn.

Step away from the incessant noise for a meaningful period of time. Experience the unmatched satisfaction of applying deep focus to create real value.

You have much progress to make, but it can’t happen when your mind is pulled in three dozen different directions. Apply singular focus to what you do best, and come away with something truly amazing.

— Ralph Marston

March 18

Rise to the challenges

The most effective actions are usually not the easiest actions. Fortunately, when life asks much of you, you’re able to deliver.

You can call upon your strength, and that strength increases. You can choose to act with responsibility, imparting more and more value to your responsible behavior.

You can determine what is best, and discipline yourself to adopt it. You can encounter ever-growing challenges, and improve your capabilities as you work through them.

You’re smart enough to choose competence over convenience. You’re enlightened enough to know that the quality of life depends on your level of commitment.

The world is often a treacherous place, yet your journey through it can result in great success. And all along your path you will leave life much better than you found it.

Rise again and again to the challenges. For you know that to the extent you do, everyone benefits.

— Ralph Marston

March 19

Driven by problems

It’s part of a cycle deeply embedded in all of life. Difficulty gives rise to new achievement.

The more intolerable the burden, the more energy is put forth to overcome it. Lessons learned, abilities developed, resources harnessed continue to provide benefit long after trouble has receded.

The long, magnificent history of achievement is also a history of great challenge. On a personal level, on a worldwide scale, progress is driven by problems.

When times are good, complacency settles in, and eventually lets trouble in the door. When enough people are threatened by that trouble, they rise up and overcome it.

Most of the innovations and technologies you enjoy today had their genesis in pain, difficulty, and inconvenience. Many of the worst problems you’re navigating through right now will lead to valuable advances in days to come.

Certainly life is not always easy, but perhaps that’s a feature and not a bug. Precisely because life is not easy, it finds a way to get better and better.

— Ralph Marston

March 20

Live in strength

Today, discover how strong you can be. Decide to act with strength, to respond with strength, to envision yourself in every situation as strong.

You are as strong as you choose to be. Choose to become stronger than you’ve ever been before.

Live in strength, for the sake of your family, your community, your world, yourself. Give the strength you have to give, and you will have more.

Let go of any thought or inclination that could sap your strength. Feel the power of your purpose and let it raise your thoughts, your actions, your perspective to new levels of strength.

Make your strength sustainable by making it authentic. Dedicate that strength to advance goodness, truth, and love.

All of life can benefit from your strength today, every day. Call that strength to the surface and inject its energy into all you do.

— Ralph Marston

March 21

Today has arrived

There’s something you can do to make today a little better than yesterday. There will be something you can do tomorrow to make it a little better than today.

Your actions make a difference, so use those actions to make that difference a positive one. Your thoughts and your attitude make a big difference, so choose them wisely, intentionally.

All sorts of factors outside your influence determine what this day delivers to you. Yet you determine what to do with it all.

From whatever the raw materials may be, decide to create richness, joy, positive experience. Do all those things that you do best, and make this day a day you’ll be thankful to have experienced.

Embrace the possibilities that will enable you to transcend limitations. Discover new and creative ways to add rich substance to life.

Today has arrived, and the way it unfolds for you depends mostly on what you choose to make of it. Go ahead and make of it the best you can imagine.

— Ralph Marston

March 22

Diversity of opinion

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Ralph Marston

March 23

Where you’re headed

What makes life good is not any particular situation, no matter how attractive it may be. What makes life good is the process of moving toward something deeply desired and valuable.

Where you’re headed is far more significant than where you are. And you have remarkable influence over where you’re headed.

Whether you’re currently in a good place, or a brutally challenging one, the decision is yours. Where do you now choose to be going?

Success begins to happen the moment you start acting to make it happen. The rewards of any ambitious effort begin to accumulate within the effort itself.

Look forward, to a world made better by your focused action, your resourcefulness, your love. Envision that world, step purposefully toward it, and it begins to be real.

You have the moment, you have the skill, you have the desire. Harness it all to move life in a positive and fulfilling direction.

— Ralph Marston

March 24

Life goes forward

Clouds dance along the distant horizon. Emerald leaves reach toward a sapphire sky.

The wonder that is life, the miracle that is existence, happens now. In you, through you, with you, around you, unfold beauty and detail never before known.

Within the spectacle, dwell endless possibilities. Within you lives the wisdom to choose from those possibilities, along with the energy that brings them into being.

Look outward for a while and take in the enormity, the potential of all you see. Then pull your focus deeply inside, and consider all you love, all you can do, all you can be.

Allow yourself to realize what an amazing and valuable moment this is. Encourage yourself as your spirit rises up to fulfill its highest destiny.

Live the wonder, ensconced in something larger than all you could ever imagine. Life goes forward, now and always.

— Ralph Marston

March 25

Lighter load

You have good reason to be angry about many things. Yet you gain no real benefits from prolonging that anger.

It’s understandable that you would feel resentment for the way certain situations unfold. But what good outcome has resentment created, ever, for anyone?

Life delivers ample challenges on a regular basis. There’s no reason to magnify those challenges by holding on to a negative emotion.

For every tinge of anger, or envy, resentment, annoyance, or frustration you feel, you have a choice. You can choose to let it grind you down, or you can choose to let it go.

Give yourself the gift of a lighter load. Enable yourself to direct all your energy toward what’s most meaningful and beneficial.

Step briskly away from negative emotions. You’ll be doing what’s best for you, and for everyone.

— Ralph Marston

March 26

Surprise life back

One thing you can be certain of, is uncertainty. Life is always changing, and sometimes those changes come quickly, from out of nowhere.

Yet you have the good fortune of being highly adaptable. You are so skilled at adapting that you often transform negative developments into positive outcomes.

That’s why you can recall many times when things worked out much better than you first thought they would. You were able to successfully adapt.

What can you do when life surprises you? You can surprise life back, in ways that support your dreams, goals, values, and all you love.

Whenever the situation changes, step back and take a good, clear, updated look at reality. Commit yourself to finding a positive path through the world as it is, that leads toward what you value most.

It’s not always easy, yet it’s something you’ve been doing successfully your whole life. Adapt, and surprise life back with how well you can do so.

— Ralph Marston

March 27

Enough to inspire you

Of course it’s inspiring when everything works the way it is supposed to, and fits perfectly into place. Yet you can also be inspired by mistakes, failures, and ineffectiveness.

Ideal outcomes inspire you to reach even higher and do even better. Undesired outcomes inspire you to make necessary adjustments, to grow stronger and more resilient.

Life rewards you and challenges you at the same time, offering new possibilities of every flavor. And with each turn of events you’ll discover more ways to be inspired.

Do you seek inspiration to live at your most purposeful, effective level? All you have to do is look at what’s going on around you.

Look with love, with care, with understanding, curiosity and deep gratitude. Whatever is going on, life always has more than enough to inspire you.

What will inspire you today? Just take a look and see.

— Ralph Marston

March 28

Somewhere in the middle

Accept the reality of this moment, this situation, for what it is. But don’t be dolefully resigned to it or blithely complacent about it.

If you don’t like what’s going on, things will change. If you do like what’s going on, things will change.

Every day, in fact, is a mixture of challenges to be faced and joys to be lived. Every situation includes difficulties, opportunities, satisfactions, frustrations, uncertainties and inspiration.

You’re not going to encounter a long stretch of time that’s completely perfect in every way. And fortunately, you’re not likely to find yourself in a situation of utterly hopeless despair.

The vast majority of your time you’ll be somewhere in the middle. In that space, with positive intention and focused effort, you can leave each moment a little better than you found it.

Today is the way it is, and that’s an opportunity. You can do something with it, you can do something about it, so go ahead and give it your best.

— Ralph Marston

March 29

The value of hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Ralph Marston

March 30

Activate self-discipline

Six months from now, what actions will you be thankful you took today? Two years from now, what temptations will you be thankful you resisted today?

In the current moment, self-discipline can feel like a bother, an imposition that cramps your style. Yet over time, it feels like satisfaction, achievement, strength, confidence.

Your choices today have a major impact on the quality of your future. Now is your opportunity to make the choices that lead to a desirable future.

This moment will be over soon, but its consequences can continue for your whole life. Make the choices now that lead to consequences you’ll be glad to live with.

When you’re in the moment, it’s tempting to live only for the moment. Yet you have the power, you have the choice, to do much better than that.

Exercise that power, activate your self-discipline, and do your future self a big favor. Act now to create the best consequences for your whole life, for today, for tomorrow, and for years to come.

— Ralph Marston

March 31

Go the distance

The enemy of adversity is competence. Get some, get some more, organize it all together, and use it.

The enemy of loneliness is love. Give some, give some more, be creative about it, and care.

The enemy of hopelessness is generosity. What you offer to others, you gain many times over.

The enemy of boredom is curiosity. Life’s wonders do not live exclusively in museums, but are found in every particle of existence.

The enemy of annoyance is gratitude. Things could be a lot worse, and reminding yourself of that makes things a lot better.

A surprisingly short distance from what brings you down, is what makes you strong. Go the distance, find that strength, and live it.

— Ralph Marston

Wow, what a month March has been, thank God for this last day of the month. I have a lot of gratitude with the daily recovery reading page. Thank you Tammy for you do. In Jesus name. Amen.

Thank you Wilbe. Maybe, hopefully, and prayerfully April will be better. :195: April 8th, my hubby and I will be married for 34 years! :1: