Daily Motivator - December

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December 1

Glowing on the inside

How can you fill the day with ambition and focused action without erupting in stress and anxiety? Care greatly while also not caring at all.

Give personally without taking it personally. Involve your body, mind, spirit in the effort while detaching your ego from the result.

Do that, and challenge becomes a good thing, great in fact. Do that, and you’ll eagerly seek to jump into even the most demanding work.

The way to trap yourself in a giant blob of stress is to make it all about you. Fortunately, you never have to do that.

Be there, be involved, be a part, be effective, but don’t let it define you or dictate your attitude. Let what you do flow from who you are, from how you choose to feel, rather than the other way around.

Do the hard stuff, the complicated, difficult and rewarding stuff, without letting it be so hard on you. Keep peace, love, goodness glowing on the inside, and you can gracefully make great progress on the outside.

— Ralph Marston

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December 2

Difficult but not impossible

It’s difficult to get back up and get going again when you’ve been repeatedly knocked down. It’s difficult, but not impossible.

It’s difficult to move forward with enthusiasm and energy when much of what you encounter is negative and discouraging. That’s certainly difficult, yet not impossible.

It’s easy to know what you must do. It’s much more difficult to actually do it, yet it’s not impossible.

There are a lot of very worthwhile things that are also very difficult. Just because they are difficult is no reason to shy away from them.

The very fact that something is difficult probably means it is worth doing. Those who achieve great things are those who are willing to do the difficult stuff.

Sure it’s difficult, yet you can do it. When you do, you’ll be adding richness, options, value to your life and your world.

— Ralph Marston

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December 3

Adventure calls

Shake off the dust that has settled on your sense of adventure. Today is your chance to inject new energy into life.

Venture a few steps away from what’s comfortable and familiar. Remind yourself you can handle it, then venture out a little bit more.

You really don’t want to waste this once-in-a-lifetime day by living it just like all the others. Whatever your situation may be, you have countless ways to add new, challenging, interesting substance.

Turn down a road where you’ve never gone. Listen with curiosity and respect to a viewpoint that’s thoroughly different than your own.

Reconnect with someone you haven’t talked to in years. Form a new friendship with someone decades older or younger than you.

Don’t let yourself take this unique day for granted. Now, while you can, put some delicious adventure into it.

-Ralph S. Marston

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December 4

Choose the best assumptions

You can’t think through every little decision every time. So you make assumptions.

Those assumptions often serve you well, and you’d be overwhelmed without them. However, many of those assumptions could also be holding you back.

Some of your assumptions may have never been accurate in the first place. Others may have ceased to be true a long time ago, so it pays to regularly examine and question them.

There are things you assume to be impossible, for you, or for anyone. But are they really impossible, or is your assumption just serving as a convenient excuse?

There are things you assume you need, to get your work done, to be happy. But do you really need them, or are you sticking with them just because they’re comfortable and familiar?

You can’t completely eliminate assumptions, yet you can make sure they don’t hold you back. Take a look at your assumptions, and choose only the ones that best reflect and enhance the life you wish to live.

— Ralph Marston

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December 5

Quick recovery

Disappointment hurts, yet with enough time you can get over it, and get back to a more positive frame of mind. But do you really need all that time to make a recovery?

Interruptions and distractions shatter your focus, and yet you can eventually regain that focus. What if you could shorten eventually to immediately?

It’s a fact of life that you’re going to be disappointed, interrupted, frustrated, and nudged into negativity. Fortunately, you never have to stay there long.

You cannot reasonably expect to never get knocked down. Yet you can always choose to make a quick recovery.

Decide that you won’t give the negative things time to establish momentum. The moment you know you’ve gotten off track, give power to the intention of re-establishing your positive focus.

Instead of getting upset over what went wrong, use all your energy to get quickly back to what you were doing. Make it your intention, and you’ll find yourself making it happen.

— Ralph Marston

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December 6

Now you are free

If a thought is not serving you well, release it. Give yourself permission to let it go.

Is there a thought that has you stuck in fear and worry, that’s keeping you awake, blocking you from positive action? You no longer have to hold on to it.

You can stop fighting the thought. You can stop providing it a place to exist, stop giving it a reason to be.

You have the power right now to let that thought dissolve into nothing. Choose to clear it from your head, from your life, never welcome to return.

Breathe in the fresh air of a fresh beginning. Feel the power of peace as it expands into your entire awareness.

Now you are free to think higher thoughts with a clear mind, with positive purpose. Now you are free to live your best life.

— Ralph Marston

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December 7

Change and endure

Seek change, embrace change, encourage change. At the same time be wary of change, careful about how you make it.

Change exists at the heart of life, forming the very definition of life. Yet there is more to life than mere change.

Life has meaning, beauty, worth because it can transcend change. There is an essential, treasured part of you that is the same as it ever was, and will always be.

Life changes and at the same time, endures. As such, in that glorious contradiction, there is nothing else like it.

Seize opportunities to change, to grow, improve, move forward. At the same time, refuse to compromise those fundamental, enabling values on which your life is built.

Change, but not just for the sake of change. Change in order to better express the meaning, the purpose, the essence that is always you.

— Ralph Marston

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December 8

Enthusiasm gets results

Your level of success depends on your level of enthusiasm. But your level of enthusiasm does not necessarily depend on your level of success.

Even when the results are not what you wanted, choose to go forward with enthusiasm. Because that will empower you to create the results you do want.

Enthusiasm pushes you to continue failing long enough to arrive at success. Enthusiasm expresses your belief in what you’re doing in a way that’s compelling and contagious.

When you’re cynical and dejected, even the best strategies, tools, resources won’t work very well. Yet when you’re enthusiastic, you’ll find plenty of ways to get the very best out of whatever you have to work with.

With enthusiasm, you see opportunities that would otherwise be invisible. With enthusiasm, you attract other enthusiastic, effective people to support your cause.

Even when the situation offers no reason to be enthusiastic, there’s a great reason to be enthusiastic. Because enthusiasm gets results.

— Ralph Marston

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December 9

The wonder is yours

Live in wonder of the wonder. Refuse to let your aliveness grow complacent.

See that in each new moment a whole new world is born. Be dazzled by the beauty, inspired by the possible.

Laugh at the worries as you recall how foolish they are. Smile at the opportunities as you find new joy bringing them to life.

Keep your spirit always young, delighted and amazed at every little thing. Warm your skin in the sunlight, cool your face in the breeze.

Never stop discovering again how much you have and how little you need. Never stop making new richness from it all.

The wonder is yours, now, here, always. Live it, love it, share it, be it.

— Ralph Marston

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December 10

Broaden your perspective

Is it really so important that you get your way? Is it really so important that you prove your point?

Life is about more than making an impressive appearance. Life is about more than getting the last word.

The things that matter are not the things that boost your ego. A fulfilling life is impossible if you value yourself above all else.

By all means assert yourself when the situation calls for it. Remember though, that most situations, most interactions do not call for it.

Value is built through understanding, and understanding arises from respectfulness. Achievement requires cooperation, and it is humility, not pride, not vanity, that brings about that cooperation.

Let go of the narrow, superficial concerns that create unnecessary barriers, that hold you back. Broaden your perspective and get much more from life than merely getting your way.

-Ralph S. Marston

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December 11

Inspired by action

The work is not easy. But that is no reason to avoid it.

You’re not clear about what to do. But that is no excuse to do nothing.

What you must do is get started. What you must be is committed to seeing it through.

Begin the task, take the first step, and your effort will illuminate the next step. Stay with it, keep going, and your purpose and passion grow strong.

If you wait for inspiration, and do nothing, the inspiration has no place to take hold. Instead, get busy, and with each effort your work becomes more inspired.

Invest yourself, commit your time, your action, your focus to the progress you desire. Go ahead, do, and you’ll be inspired to do much more.

— Ralph Marston

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December 12

Value in every experience

You are always experiencing something, so fill all those experiences with value. Make it your intention to bring quality and enrichment to every experience.

The nature of the experience matters not so much. What you put into the experience, that’s far more important.

You don’t have to wait or hope or strive for conditions to be a certain way. You can make anything you do into a worthwhile, fulfilling experience.

Don’t waste the experience fighting against external factors with anger, resentment or frustration. Instead, visualize yourself emerging with a stronger, more positive purpose, with peaceful inspiration, wisdom, and new energy.

Every experience is filled with opportunities to make life richer. Embrace those opportunities, allow that new richness to grow from your attitude and your actions.

Recognize the great value in this experience, and the next, and the next. Give your best, whatever the situation may be, and add that value to the experience of your life.

— Ralph Marston

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December 13

Better

Quantity is easy. Quality is better.

Transactions are efficient. Relationships are better.

Free is popular, enticing. Challenge, effort, paying the price, are better.

Fleeting fame is widely celebrated. Quiet, lasting achievement is better.

Being coddled is effortless. Freedom and responsibility, with all the work and messy situations they entail, are better.

The meme of the hour is trendy. Thinking, choosing for yourself, living with intention is much better.

— Ralph Marston

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December 14

What already is

Desire what already is. Love, be thankful for, enjoy, find fulfillment, meaning, peace and hope in what already is.

Do not cheat yourself out of life by delaying your living of it until some idealized future. Now is when you are, when everything is, when the reality of life is.

Right now you can laugh, cry, learn, work, fall down, get up, and laugh some more. Right now you can bring to life your highest hopes, strongest values, and most treasured dreams.

Yes, by all means imagine where you can go. And extend that imagining all the way to now, when you can actually do something positive about it.

You have arrived. Here is the real world, your real, miraculous life, filled with every possibility.

What already is, is infinite abundance in every direction. Embrace it, benefit from it, do great things with it, now.

— Ralph Marston

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December 15

New fulfillment

Push through the fog of doubt and hesitation. Today rewards you with great endeavors to pursue.

Shake off excuses that have long ago grown stale. Discover once again the thrill of your own effort, the joy of your own effectiveness, the satisfaction of your own good action.

Raise up into reality your best ideas, dreams, intentions. Drink in the soul-nourishing elixir of achievement by your own hands.

Plunge into challenges, daring them to reveal how strong you truly are. Experience life at its highest level as you transform raw abundance into meaningful value.

Today exists as a vessel to be loaded with new fulfillment. You gaze upon opportunity that stretches beyond the horizon, and grow determined not to let anything stand in your way.

Get swept up and carried along by that determination, even further than you thought you could roam. Latch on to the best possibilities, here, now, and don’t let go.

— Ralph Marston