Daily Motivator - July

[bluidkiti]

July 1

What could have happened

There’s some value in speculating about the future. There’s almost no value in speculating about the past.

What could have happened, what might have happened, did not in fact happen. What you could have done was never actually done.

You cannot change anything by wishing a particular event had previously unfolded in a different way. The most you can do is learn from missed opportunities and unfortunate choices.

Collect the small amount of information from your consideration of what could have been, then let it go. Focus attention, energy, and effort on the many opportunities now available to you.

Point your thinking forward. Consider what will create a positive impact on your life, on your world.

Then act on your present opportunities. Leave behind all that could have been and work to bring about the best that can be.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 2

Unfamiliar territory

Do you want a better understanding of who you are and what you’re capable of achieving? Venture into unfamiliar territory.

Put yourself in a situation where you’re forced to depend on your own knowledge, resourcefulness, and strengths. You’ll quickly find out what those strengths are, and you’ll figure out ways to improve upon them.

That new territory could be physical, social, vocational, intellectual, or some combination. Whatever the case, it can energize you, heighten your awareness, and clarify what’s actually important to you.

Though your current situation has its challenges, you’ve mostly figured out how to handle them. Think of what you could learn, and how much you could grow, from a starkly different set of challenges.

Let yourself experience how well you respond to those challenges. Enable yourself to learn and improve from that experience.

A little bit of adventure can add a lot of value to your life. Go where you haven’t been, and gain a deeper understanding of who you truly are.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

Happy July my dear friends,
Let's thank God for getting us though
The Month of June one day at a time.
Stay safe this 4th of July.

[bluidkiti]

July 3

Not a problem

You are skilled at solving problems and eager to do so. But that in itself can be a problem.

Because a few problems are best left alone. Sometimes your efforts to address a particular problem could be put to more valuable and effective use elsewhere.

Indeed, some problems are problems solely because you assume them to be. Just because you don’t like a particular situation doesn’t mean it’s harmful or threatening.

When you attempt to solve problems that aren’t really problems you can actually make things worse. Seek instead to focus your problem-solving skills where they can make a measurable, meaningful difference.

When a problem comes to your attention, before you jump into action, ask yourself. Is it really a problem the requires your irreplaceable time and attention?

If so, put your skills and resources to work on improving the situation. But if not, have the strength and confidence to simply let it be.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 4

Modest improvements

An improvement in one area of your life is not limited to that one area. It’s likely to benefit many other parts of your world.

No matter where you create value, it casts its favorable light into other places. Goodness travels quickly through life’s far-reaching interconnections.

It’s easy to see that your positive thoughts and actions often have immediate and direct results. They also have indirect results that can continue far beyond what’s obvious, beyond the moment, beyond the situation, beyond you.

With one single, limited success you initiate a positive momentum. It inspires you and others to build on that momentum.

The more you experience the rewards of your own actions, the more eager you’ll be to make a difference in other ways. You can ride that momentum through life’s countless connections to the big and fulfilling outcomes you desire.

What modest improvements can you make in the next ten minutes, or in the next few days? Create a little value in one place, and see how quickly it spreads.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 5

This life that is yours

Be present with the peace of this day. Fill your awareness with the potential of now.

Gaze with awe at the wonders that surround you. Feel all the goodness you have known as it echoes into this moment.

Listen to the harmony that holds all of life together. Join in with the energy, purpose and intention of existence.

Discover again and again how well you can resonate with the places, people, experiences, values, and ideas you encounter. Softly breathe in, slowly breathe out, and let it all be.

With a grateful heart, give your honest best to whatever situations arise. Step forward with confidence, with kindness, with the persistence to continue no matter what.

Here in this place, in this time, is this life that is yours. Live it fully, live it well, live it for the miracle it is.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 6

Sincerely living

Are you sincerely living each moment or are you putting on a dramatic performance? Are you more concerned about how you appear than you are about the truth, integrity, and effectiveness of what you’re doing?

Do you notice yourself voicing the same frustrations again and again? At some point it becomes more about the performance and less about actually resolving the issues.

Pause to take a step back, and invite fresh, new levels of gratitude into your awareness. Let go of the dramatic frustration, and honestly consider what you can do to improve the situation.

Do you feel the need to announce your love so often that it turns into a meaningless routine? Look instead for new and meaningful ways to put your love into practice.

Have you ever found yourself constructing elaborate narratives to feel sorry for yourself and to seek pity from others? Rather than casting yourself as a victim, put your energy into taking positive, incremental steps that enable you to steadily grow stronger.

This is your unique and precious life, not just another tired and predictable performance. Put your authentic love and energy into it, and make it the beautiful, fulfilling experience it can surely be.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 7

The way things are

To improve reality you must first accept and adapt to the specific reality that already exists. You cannot change reality by hiding from it, or wishing it away, or pretending it’s something different than it is.

You have dreams, desires, detailed ideas of how you would like the world to be. Yet the only starting place you can ever have is where you are, the way things are.

Shouting down, ignoring, or demonizing those who speak the truth will not make the truth go away. Only by accepting and working within what is true and what is real can you make any progress.

It is admirable to put passion and energy into moving toward an ideal. To do so you must carefully and honestly navigate through territory that is not ideal.

That means understanding and having some degree of respect for those who do not share your ideal. It means working to find common ground and then working further to expand upon that common ground.

The current reality has its roots in times and circumstances that existed long before you were ever aware of them. Your success at creating positive change depends on your willingness to humbly accept that truth and operate within the way things are.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 8

Express your thoughts

Expressing your thoughts in concrete form helps you organize them, challenge them, strengthen them, and expand on them. Whether you write down your thoughts or speak them out loud, or both, you’ll find great benefit in committing them to words.

Just because you think something doesn’t make it true. Yet you can hone your thoughts into a state of truth by first laying them out in tangible ways.

When thoughts are merely going around and around in your mind they risk turning into endless repetitions or pointless obsessions. Seek to give your thoughts power, relevance, and veracity by enabling them to be objectively considered.

You can produce great insights by becoming lost in your thoughts. Yet you have to take care that those insightful thoughts do not themselves become lost to memory and posterity.

You are constantly thinking and then thinking more. Hold on to the best of those thoughts, and give yourself the chance to refine them, by accurately preserving them.

Throughout each day, your mind is busy offering its treasures in the form of thoughts. Hold on to and improve upon the best of them, and enable your world to benefit from their great potential value.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 9

A single hour

How will you feel about yourself in exactly one hour? That depends on your attitude and your actions between now and then.

Will you use the time to live life fully? Or will you spend the time so wastefully and destructively that you soon come to regret it?

The choice is yours here and now. The quality of your future depends on what you do with the present.

A single hour will pass quickly. The way you live that next hour can impact your life for a long time to come.

Is there anything you wish you had done in the past hour, the past week or past few months? Now is your chance to stop wishing and start doing.

The next hour of your life begins now. Live it as if it’s the most important one yet, because it is.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 10

Live in the richness

Whatever you are struggling with is another manifestation of life’s richness. Appreciate it for what it is, and with renewed energy delve into the richness.

In those people and events and ideas that earn your passion abides even more of the richness. Let it capture you, and your imagination, and refresh your sense of possibility.

Life’s richness also tucks itself deeply into all those little mundane matters that seem at first not to matter. Yet when you look you’ll find it, and will be surprised again at the endless forms beauty can take.

In times of joy the richness seeks to make itself glaringly obvious. In seasons of sadness it quietly holds your hand and encourages you to push forward.

Today life’s richness surrounds you, infuses you. Your chance to know it comes and goes with every now.

You seek, you yearn, and what you yearn for is already connected to you. Live in the richness, wherever and however it may be.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 11

Beyond yourself

The most reliable route to an empty life is to live only for yourself. Every other pain becomes magnified by the pain of self absorption.

Yet you always have a way to get away from that unbearable emptiness. Begin to sincerely care for someone or something beyond yourself, and a golden warmth enters your life.

Look back on your experiences and you’re sure to recall times when this very thing has happened. Give of yourself, and you begin to know a sense of purpose that cannot be reached in any other way.

Behind every desire is a longing for meaning and fulfillment. To quench that thirst for meaning, seek to live beyond yourself.

Before you speak, choose words that will serve a greater good. Before you act, choose efforts that will make a positive contribution to the world around you.

In small things and large, use the opportunity of each moment to see and to act beyond your own concerns. Again and again, the success you create by doing so will be real and fulfilling.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 12

Living the consequences

What you’ve been doing got you where you are. What you do now can either keep you there or take you somewhere else.

Right now you are living the consequences of your past choices. That puts you in an ideal position to decide and to act upon what your future consequences will be.

You have gained valuable expertise on which habits and patterns bring you genuine fulfillment and which ones end up wasting your time or worse. Now you have the opportunity to act on that expertise and experience.

It’s easy to know what you feel like doing in the moment and what you don’t feel like doing. But that’s not always the best basis for choosing among your options.

Fortunately, you also have a lifetime of experiencing the consequences of your own choices. With every new choice you can take more of those consequences into consideration.

Very soon you’ll be living the consequences of whatever you decide to do right now. Based on the knowledge of all your past and present consequences, ask yourself, what will that decision be?

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 13

Magical world

Imagine a world in which everything seems to happen by magic. In this world, your needs and desires are provided to you with little to no effort on your part.

Food of your choosing is magically delivered to your table. Shampoo, toothpaste, clothing, shoes, toys, and anything else you could wish for appear on your doorstep whenever you want.

Garbage and waste are magically whisked away. Limitless hours of entertainment, tailored precisely to your taste, magically and instantly appear at your command.

Such a world is not particularly difficult to imagine. Because with present-day infrastructure and technology, for the most part you are already living in it.

But when desires are automatically satisfied, it leaves you with a gnawing emptiness. And you wonder, when all you ever do is choose from menus, what provides meaning in your life?

What makes anything meaningful is not just having it, but the investment of your time and effort and resourcefulness in it. That, you come to realize, is the real magic.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

July 14

Season of achievement

You want to do this, you need to do that. But wanting and needing won’t get anything accomplished.

You envision all sorts of ways to improve your world, your environment, your life, and that’s great. Yet vision alone is not enough.

What if you were to take just a single initial step? And what if that felt so satisfying you became inspired to take another?

There’s something you can do right now to put what you visualize into tangible form. Some readily accessible action will demonstrate to yourself both your commitment and your capability.

Give yourself that experience. Then extend it indefinitely into an exhilarating season of achievement and fulfillment.

What you work to attain is well worth the effort, because in that effort you become an increasingly better version of yourself. Go ahead and make it happen.

— Ralph Marston