Daily Motivator - July
 

July 1

Step up to life

Step up to life, to responsibility, to effort, achievement, fulfillment. Step up, with purpose, enthusiasm, energy and love.

Calmly embrace the moment and all it entails. Know, beyond any doubt, that you will give your best to it.

Set aside any need to judge. Fill your awareness with intention to make a difference.

You’ve spent a lifetime learning what works and what doesn’t, what creates progress and what blocks it. Step up, put your unique wisdom and experience into effective action.

This is your chance to move your world forward, perhaps even to have a major breakthrough. Feel your vision, feel your purpose, step up and follow it with all you have.

You are already well on the way to making this a great day. Step up to the challenges, step up to the possibilities, and give new goodness, new value to life.

— Ralph Marston

July 2

Get to the point

The point of this day is to make new progress and enrich all of life. Get to the point and get it done.

You’re here in this time and place to make a positive difference. Get to work doing what you’re here to do.

Let your strong sense of purpose pierce through the complexity, distractions, difficulties and temptations. With unwavering focus, do what you know is best, what is meaningful, what is good.

If you discover you’ve wandered a little off course, don’t waste time letting it bring you down. Just reorient yourself in a purposeful direction, and step forward with an even stronger commitment.

You have great things to get done today. Get to the point, stick with it, and enjoy the sweet fulfillment of your focus and persistence.

This very moment overflows with potential value. Get to the point, and make that value yours.

— Ralph Marston

July 3

Live it well

Be good to yourself. At the same time, demand the best from yourself.

Be good to yourself, not just in a superficial way. Reward yourself for the great work you always expect from yourself.

In return, never settle for less from yourself then a constant commitment to excellence. Look always for actions that will improve your life, your world, your situation, and then take those actions.

Let every passing day deepen your enjoyment and appreciation of life. Utilize every day, every opportunity to give new value to life.

Put forth great effort. Treat yourself to great enjoyment.

This beautiful, miraculous life is yours. In all its aspects, live it well.

— Ralph Marston

July 4

Bring new goodness

All that you’ve ever done has been accomplished under less than perfect conditions. Every bit of progress you’ve made has been in the face of obstacles and limitations.

Stop waiting for the situation to be perfect. Start making good and meaningful use of the situation as it is.

Today you have time, energy, opportunity that you’ll never have again. Do something great with it.

Focus on the possibilities and you will find your way beyond the limitations. Devote yourself to action and enable yourself to transcend any difficult circumstances.

You’ve achieved much and now you can achieve more. You’ve extracted real value from many different kinds of situations, and now you can do it again.

What matters more than how things are, is how you choose to be. Choose today to be the person who brings new goodness to life.

— Ralph Marston

July 5

Dream, dream, dream it

Dream, and let your dreams lift you high above the problems and disappointments. Dream, and give yourself a perspective that transcends the everyday struggles.

Dream, and give the power of purpose to your efforts, your words, your thoughts and encounters. Dream, and let your dreams pull you in the direction of your highest vision.

Dream, and provide reason and means to expect the best in whatever you undertake. Dream, with the commitment necessary to fulfill your dreams, and recharge life with excellence of your own choosing.

Dream, and connect your dreams to the actions you must take, to the responsibilities you must honor. Enable your dreams to remind you why and to renew your energy.

Dream, for there is a person inside who cares deeply about many things. Dream, and follow those dreams, because your love for life is one of a kind, and deserves full expression.

Dream, dream, dream it until you do it. Then dream again and pull all of life higher along with you.

— Ralph Marston

July 6

Earned wisdom

Learn from your mistakes, and put into practice what you’ve learned. Then you won’t have to live with regret for those mistakes.

As your life moves forward, each choice can be a more positive, effective, fulfilling choice. Because each new choice can be informed by all the choices that came before it.

Allow the poor choices in your past to point you toward more positive choices now. Instead of being ashamed or resentful about what happened, be enthusiastic about what you can now do with the experience.

You’ve suffered enough because of your past mistakes. There is no point in punishing yourself further.

Decide to transform those old mistakes in to new opportunities. Let the negative experiences in your past motivate you to take positive action now.

With those past mistakes and their consequences, you’ve earned yourself some valuable wisdom. Put that wisdom into action today.

— Ralph Marston

July 7

Choose only the best

Don’t internalize the pressures. Instead, internalize the beauty, the hope, the positive possibilities.

You can effectively deal with every difficulty, without allowing any difficulties to become a part of you. Remind yourself that you exist beyond them all.

Respond to life with a smile rather than with new stress. You can see the situations clearly and realistically without taking them personally.

Your life is too beautiful to let it be degraded by frustration and annoyance. Your possibilities are too magnificent to let them be compromised by negativity.

Enjoy putting your capabilities to use, solving problems, making progress. Always choose to make the best of those problems rather than letting them get the best of you.

It’s always your choice what you hold on to inside. Each time, each day, choose only the best.

— Ralph Marston

July 8

Pick yourself up

If your efforts fail to bring the results you intended, don’t get discouraged. Get busy, adjust, and make an even greater effort.

Positive feedback and positive results are good, helpful, nice, but not essential. You can be positively motivated by disappointing results too.

Life is not fair, and complaining that life is not fair won’t change anything for the better. What will make things better is to persist in what you do.

Sooner or later you will pick yourself up and get yourself going again. You might as well make it sooner.

Let go of judgments about whether it’s easy or hard, inconvenient or complicated. Just look ahead, toward what you wish to achieve, and take the first step.

After you stumble, the way to feel better is to feel yourself taking action. Go ahead, and bring on that good feeling as soon as you can.

— Ralph Marston

July 9

Infinite options

This moment has infinite options. Commit to one and follow through on it.

Seek to make the best choice, but don’t put all of your energy into merely making the choice. Decide, and then act on your decision.

You may not always make the perfect choice, or think of everything that could go wrong or go right. But go ahead, make the choice and then move forward with it.

You’re likely to have doubts, second thoughts, third thoughts. As those thoughts come, keep taking action anyway.

A one-hundred-percent perfect plan is of no use if the plan is not executed. So put thought into crafting a reasonably good plan and then direct your energy into making it happen.

Embrace life’s many options, but don’t let the endless choices overwhelm you. Pick a specific path, act on it, and transform your choice into real value.

— Ralph Marston

July 10

Possible problems

Don’t be stopped by the possibility that something can go wrong. Something can always go wrong, and you can always deal with it.

Take good precautions, plan well, prepare for the likely eventualities. Then go ahead, take action.

You can imagine all sorts of negative scenarios, most of which will never happen. It’s good to be aware of what could happen, of problems that could arise, but don’t let that awareness stop you from moving ahead.

You can’t be guaranteed of a smooth path or a perfect outcome. What you can do is your best, with commitment to your purpose, with confidence in your ability.

Yes, there will be difficulties. Yes, you can succeed anyway.

Step forward now, aware of the possible problems and ready to work through whatever comes. You have great things to do.

— Ralph Marston

July 11

Tell yourself something good

Tell yourself something good about yourself. Tell yourself something good about someone close to you.

Tell yourself something good about the day ahead. Tell yourself something good about life in this world, about the possibilities that extend out in front of you right now.

Tell yourself something good, and take it to heart. Remind yourself of the beauty, the wonder, of small actions that can make a big difference.

Tell yourself something good about this day, about how you can contribute to the way it unfolds. Tell yourself something good about this situation, about all you can do to make it even better.

Too often, the impressions that slide into your awareness are not especially helpful or nourishing. Choose to reverse that negative bias by telling yourself something good, something true, something wonderful.

Tell yourself about all you can do to give life more meaning, more substance, more joy. Tell yourself something good, and let that goodness come to life through you.

— Ralph Marston

it's good to be part of this wonderful program of recovery thank you Father for this wonderful life in the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

July 12

Best choice

Make the best choice, not just the easiest choice. Step back from the moment, and give yourself enough perspective to make that best choice.

The benefits of the easiest choice disappear quickly. The value of the best choice can endure for a lifetime, even longer.

You can always go with the best choice, regardless of what the excuses are saying. As enticing as the easy choice may be, you see beyond its expediency.

You know what is best. Claim it by giving your time, effort and commitment to it.

You have the strength to make the best choice and to follow through with it. Feel that strength increase each time you choose what is best.

The path leading up the mountain is steep, yet the view from the top can change your life. Though it is difficult, do what you must to choose what is best.

— Ralph Marston

July 13

Authentic intensity

Whatever you are, however you are, own it. Whatever you do, engage in it fully.

Live every moment with authentic intensity born of gratitude, wonder, kindness, love. Marvel at all that’s available to you, at all you can do with it, and constantly transform that feeling into action.

What you don’t know, admit, and learn. What you do know, make good use of, and achieve.

Rise before dawn, eager to make a positive impact. Persist in your effort, long after the initial impulse to give up.

Recognize the unique position you occupy. Understand the richness of time and opportunity with which you’re endowed, right now.

Do, think, dream, feel, with everything you are. Life is yours today, and well worth all you can give.

— Ralph Marston

July 14

Do all you can do

What you do, matters. What you fail to do, matters.

To tell yourself otherwise is just an excuse. Pretending you’re powerless to change things is mostly a way to avoid responsibility for working on those changes.

Sooner or later, that game gets old. Eventually, regret hits you like a ton of bricks.

So now, when you have the opportunity, do all you can do. Now, while this day is yours, make full use of it.

No, of course you won’t be one hundred percent effective in everything you undertake. Yet you can work, and persist, and learn from your results, and make real progress.

The obstacles and challenges are real, and so are the opportunities. Today, take those opportunities and give to them the best you have.

— Ralph Marston

July 15

Impossible becomes possible

What if your assumption is wrong? What if the thing you think impossible actually can be done?

What if the path that’s blocked is not the only one? What if you mustered a little faith in yourself and your goal, and just got started?

It’s easy to imagine all the things that could go wrong, easy to list all the reasons for giving up. What’s much harder is to step forward into uncertainty, with the commitment to see it through.

No one ever achieved much by taking the easiest course. And you certainly owe yourself a whole lot more than that.

You owe yourself the consideration that what’s impossible might just be possible. You owe yourself the experience and fulfillment of making such things happen.

The history of progress is written as the impossible becomes possible. This is your chance to write some of that history yourself.

— Ralph Marston

July 16

Fresh possibilities

You’ve already lived yesterday. Don’t live the exact same day again today.

Many aspects of the past are comfortable and familiar, and you want to hold on to them. But holding on too tightly, too much, leaves room for nothing else.

Today brings fresh possibilities. Explore some of them.

Challenge yourself to add new substance, experience, and richness to your life today. Remind yourself that this is a unique day and you have the chance to live it in a unique way.

That doesn’t mean abandoning the habits and rituals that sustain your good life. Maintain continuity of the goodness, and add something new to it today.

Today is a unique opportunity. Live the opportunity thoroughly by filling this day with new and valuable experiences.

— Ralph Marston

July 17

Grandest of opportunities

Live for the sake of living. Enjoy the day, not to advance some contrived agenda, but just because you can.

Smile for absolutely no reason. Realize how good it feels, and suddenly you have your reason.

Direct your energy and awareness away from all the stuff the world says you should crave. Free yourself to give to life whatever resonates with true value deep within.

Breathe freely, calmly with no tension, no restriction. Sense the power of life as it flows throughout you.

Undertake every task with gratitude for the opportunity to be of service to life. Be humbled and energized by the realization that you are an essential part of this unique moment.

Life is yours to live, to feel, to love, to give, to enjoy. You hold the grandest of opportunities, and it is now.

— Ralph Marston

July 18

Feel it

Your feeling about the situation is not decided by the situation. It is decided by you.

Anytime you choose, you can decide differently. You can decide to feel more empowered, more energetic, more positive.

How would you like to feel on this day, about this day? Go ahead and feel that way.

You don’t need any particular set of conditions to feel joyful, powerful, effective and purposeful. Simply make the choice to feel, and then live out the reality of your feeling.

Whatever you seek to experience, feel it before you actually have it. Build on the feeling, translate it into action and into results.

What feeling right now will push you to your highest level of performance? Go ahead, feel it, and make good things happen.

— Ralph Marston

July 19

Allow

Allow your purpose to be clear and strong. Allow your mind to be peaceful, powerful and creative.

Allow your efforts to be effective. Allow your words to be uplifting, comforting, kind and helpful.

Allow this moment, this place, to be as it is. Allow yourself to visualize how you can build upon its goodness.

Possibilities expand upon possibilities without limit. Allow those possibilities that resonate with your highest values.

Allow love to guide your intentions. Allow your actions to proceed with confidence and focus.

Allow abundance to flow into your life. Allow goodness to fill your world.

— Ralph Marston

July 20

Carry on

You don’t have to let small annoyances grow into big anxieties. You don’t have to let small setbacks grow into a larger narrative of failure.

What just happened or failed to happen does not have to burden you going forward. Instead of allowing disruptions to stop you, let them give you fresh energy for taking action.

The world will throw obstacles and surprises in your path. Go ahead and live your intentions anyway.

When life hits you hard, carry on. When you encounter injustice, unfairness, resistance, weariness, carry on.

That is the best way forward because that is your own chosen way forward. It’s difficult at the time but in retrospect it is by far the easiest choice.

This day is too beautiful, too full of possibility to let it be ruined by what you can’t control or by your past mistakes. Focus not on what has gone wrong, but on what can now go right, and on what you must do to make it so.

— Ralph Marston

July 21

Fulfillment in every step

Don’t postpone joy until the end of the journey. Live it every step of the way.

Don’t settle for a mere fraction of fulfillment. Choose to have it all.

Each action, each step you take is more than just a means to an end. Each step has a value and a joy all its own.

When you assume the task will be tedious, it will be. And your negative assumption makes the work that much harder.

Decide instead to experience joy and fulfillment in every step you take. Love and appreciate the moment you’re in, and no matter what the task may be, you’ll find yourself doing it with joy.

Find joy in every step of the journey. And you’ll arrive long before you get there.

— Ralph Marston

July 22

Prepared to persist

Expect your first attempt to work. At the same time, be prepared to quickly make another attempt.

When your initial attempt brings the results you intended, great. If it doesn’t, there’s no time to waste feeling disappointed and sorry for yourself.

Expect to succeed, and be prepared to persist. If one or two or a dozen options are exhausted, quickly round up some more options.

Just because success isn’t immediate, doesn’t mean it is out of reach. Know there’s a way, and persist.

What looks like genius is most often persistence. Be prepared to make enough attempts, and just about any achievement is within reach.

With persistence, soft droplets of water wear away the hardest stone. Imagine what you can now do with the power of persistence.

— Ralph Marston

July 23

Full extent of opportunity

No matter what you have, you have it good. Take care not to let your own complacency steal it away.

Sure, you deal with serious problems, challenges, disappointments. Yet your life is also filled with a whole lot of value.

Don’t let irreplaceable value wither away as a result of taking it for granted. Appreciate it, utilize it, and build on it.

What aspects of life would you work day and night to regain if you were to lose them? What can you do today to more fully enjoy and make use of those good things?

What are you neglecting to do today, that you would pay dearly for the opportunity to do if you didn’t have that opportunity? Remind yourself to do what you can, while you can.

Every life has its share of misfortune, but there’s no reason to add to that misfortune with complacency. See the full extent of opportunity that is now yours, and live it well.

— Ralph Marston

July 24

Major investment

The time that appears in your life today cannot be hidden in a vault and saved for later. You get precisely one chance to make use of it, and that chance is now.

The clock is ticking, the moments are already passing. Make the commitment to invest your time well.

Consider how you can use your time today to create the most positive, significant impact on your life and your world. Then focus your attention and your efforts in that direction.

How do you claim maximum value from the moments as they relentlessly pass? By filling them with purpose, with action, with meaning, a positive perspective, and a love for the possibilities.

Today offers you plenty of time to make great progress. That time is too valuable to waste even a small bit of it.

Realize the great value of what you have, and constantly keep in mind what you can do with it. Today is a major investment of your precious time, and now you can give it the best you have.

— Ralph Marston

July 25

You have the power

You have the power to make another person thankful to be alive. Today, make use of that power.

You have the power to transform challenge into achievement. Your efforts can utilize fleeting time to create lasting value.

You have the power to instill hope in situations where there is nothing but despair. You can shine the light of kindness into lives that are filled with pain.

You have the power to lift others out of loneliness. You have the power to understand someone whom no one else understands.

You have the power to make a positive difference in this world on this day. In a small way, in a big way, in your own way, make that difference.

There are things you know you can do, things you truly yearn to do, to lift life higher. Go ahead today, and make good use of the power you have for positive purpose.

— Ralph Marston

July 26

Peak of your ability

The experience of life has made you strong. Today, put that strength to good use, and grow even stronger.

You possess more knowledge and wisdom, greater capability than you had a year ago, or even a week ago. Feel the new strength you’ve gained, and focus it toward a positive, meaningful objective.

Life has asked much of you, and you’ve answered. You’ve persisted through each challenge, solved countless problems, created new value.

It might be easy and comfortable to sit back and rest on your past achievements. Yet you know, deep down, that’s not what achievements are for.

Because with each effort, you’ve invested more of yourself in life. And now you care, more than ever before, about making life the best it can be.

Here you stand today, at the peak of your ability, at the apex of your eagerness to make a difference. Now, do what you know you must.

— Ralph Marston

July 27

Imagine life better

We live in modern, comfortable homes instead of dark, primitive caves. That’s because someone, then someone else, then a whole lot of other people, imagined life better.

You can always imagine life better. Then you can put what you imagine into action.

The good things you imagine for your life, for the world, may seem unrealistic. But don’t be too quick to place judgments on them.

Instead, examine what you imagine, your hopes, your dreams, your vision of a joyous and fulfilling future. Even in your wildest fantasies, there is valuable truth and direction.

Go ahead, imagine without restraint. Imagine a world, a life, an objective that fills you with energy and enthusiasm.

Progress and achievement begin with imagination. Dare to imagine life better, and find within what you imagine the truth and energy to make it real.

— Ralph Marston

July 28

Work to know why

What pushes you into action? Knowing why, clearly, unmistakably.

What sustains you, enables you to persist through every difficulty? Belief in what you are doing, in the rightness of the path you’ve chosen.

To connect with such an irrefutable purpose can require much time, effort, soul searching, emotional pain. It is well worth your trouble.

You want to get somewhere meaningful? You must know why, and it must be authentic.

In all that you love, in all you despise, in what feels wonderful as well as awful, are hints of that purpose. Take those hints, and work to zero in on your purpose, on your why.

Work to know why. Give the power of purpose to everything you do.

— Ralph Marston

July 29

Challenge yourself

You’ve done many good things. Challenge yourself to do more.

You’re strong, capable, smart, resourceful. Challenge yourself to push your capabilities beyond their previous limits.

There’s nothing more enriching than a meaningful challenge, and the commitment to work through it. Give that special richness to yourself.

Don’t settle for the assumption that the best of life is behind you. Challenge yourself to look forward with the highest expectations ever.

Don’t allow yourself to hide behind excuses. Re-imagine those excuses, transforming them into reasons for moving forward.

Challenge yourself to exceed yourself, to be better than you’ve ever been. You’ll quickly thank yourself for having the fortitude to follow through on it.

— Ralph Marston

July 30

Always a way through

There is always a way through. Calm down, take a breath, back away from the drama and find that way.

Life’s realities are not always pleasant or comforting or convenient. Accept reality, and at the same time, refuse to be stopped by it.

Steady your nerves as the situation crashes down around you. Then pick up the pieces and do something useful, helpful, good, and valuable with them.

Keep your cool when tensions are hot. Engage your steady hand to navigate through rough and roiling passages.

There is always a way through. And on the other side, great value, opportunity, a new, stronger perspective.

With grace and confidence, see beyond the disruptions of the moment to a positive vision of what can be. With calm determination, lead the way there.

— Ralph Marston

July 31

Look objectively

How do you look objectively at your situation? By refusing to make it about you.

Pretend that the problem you’re dealing with is happening to someone else. What advice would you give that person?

Set aside your fear, insecurity, resentment. Let go of the impulse to feel sorry for yourself.

Get in the habit of seeing each situation for what it is. Free yourself from your emotional burdens and biases, and focus on a highly effective response.

How would the most disciplined, successful person you know handle the situation? That is precisely what you can do, starting now.

Rise above your own narrow concerns and open yourself to a far wider set of possibilities. Look objectively, and discover how powerful and effective you can be.

— Ralph Marston