Daily Motivator - September
 

September 1

One of those days

Is today really one of those days when nothing goes your way, when not much gets done? Or is that just what you’re telling yourself?

In fact, it’s not the day that makes things happen, that gets good work done, or prevents action. It’s you doing all that.

What the day provides is opportunity, space in which to act. What it doesn’t provide is a foregone conclusion one way or the other.

Yes, today, and every day, is one of those days. It’s a day that’s open to whatever you choose to make of it.

Any notion that the day itself is imposing frustration or bad luck is nothing but a mistaken creature of your imagination. The bad luck and frustration will end when you decide to move beyond them.

No matter how the day has unfolded so far, what you’re able to do next is up to you. Envision the best, and make it real.

— Ralph Marston

Happy September Tammy and Kracker!
May this new month and
new season be full of promise.”
“May this September bring you
new life and new beginnings!”

September 2

Notice more

There are slats on your window shutter. Have you ever counted how many?

You know leaves on the trees are green. Do you ever pay attention to all the different shades of green?

Ask yourself questions such as this, and you can teach yourself to notice more. You can learn to uncover possibilities you never even realized were there.

Notice more, and you improve your presence, mindfulness, and awareness. Where once you only perceived a problem, you can find opportunity, new value, and goodness.

Especially when it comes to other people, notice more. You’ll discover some of your habitual judgments are replaced with thoughtful understanding.

In every place, in every activity, with each person you encounter, you have the opportunity to notice more. What new things can you notice right now?

— Ralph Marston

September 3

Sometimes you can choose from a wide range of options, and other times you must go with the only one you have. In each case there are advantages and disadvantages.

Options provide you with great flexibility but they can also be difficult. When much is riding on a choice, making that choice has a way of being stressful and burdensome.

A lack of options is limiting but also in some ways liberating. When you have no choices, you don’t need to spend time or energy choosing, and can jump straight into whatever must be done.

When you have a options, choose one and then move forward with it. When you don’t have a choice, accept the situation and make it your business to move forward from it.

Whether there are dozens of paths across the landscape or just one, you must do the work to traverse a single path. Once you begin, once you commit, any options you may or may not have previously had become irrelevant.

So go ahead and make the commitment, no matter how many options you do or do not have. Make your way forward, step after step, from wherever you are able to begin.

— Ralph Marston

Though 4 2day????

The next time you find yourself complaining or grumbling, take a moment to think about the love and goodness of God in your life. Instead of complaining, express how thankful you are for who God is and what He has given you. Keep a list of things you’re grateful for and add to it throughout the week. Watch as your heart and mind begin to be transformed by the simple act of thanksgiving.

September 4

Your limits

Your limits are your limits. They are not your excuses.

Your limits are your limits right now. They will not all continue to be limits next week, or next year.

Know your limits and respect them. That provides you with the knowledge and the drive to work your way beyond them.

Don’t let what you can’t do prevent you from doing what you can do. Limits are rigid and specific, yet you can sail on past them by being flexible and innovative.

In any undertaking, the limits are certainly relevant. Yet what’s even more consequential is purpose.

What good ends do you seek to achieve? Pay attention to the limits, but don’t let them stop you.

— Ralph Marston

Great Thought willbe
I heard pastor Will Addison say an awesome quote or a daily question to live by:
" If I prayed as much as I complained about the things in my life. What would my life look like?"
So today I try and live by Philippines 4:6-7
Hav a blessed day y'all. God b with

Happy Labor Day Tammy,
May this day be full joy and love.

From: Wayne and Liz.

Happy Labor Day Kracker,
God bless you and have
Joyful peaceful
Day.

From: Wayne and Liz

Happy Labor Day to you both also!

September 5

How great you’ll feel

Right now the task ahead feels so overwhelming it can stifle your creativity and drain your energy. The job you must do is itself hampering you in getting it done.

The good news is, that’s all in your mind. And you can change your mind in an instant.

Visualize the work as already being done and imagine yourself looking back at it. Feel the satisfaction, the relief, the sense of accomplishment, the desire to repeat your success.

As you imagine looking back on the work, take note of how you did it. See and feel the innovation, the persistence, the creativity, the pure exhilaration of being purposefully productive.

Bring yourself and your vision back to the present. Now you’re ready, able, and well-equipped to get busy.

Not only do you know what you must do and what steps you can take to do it. You also have a preview of how great you’ll feel when the task is accomplished, and that energizes the efforts necessary to get it done.

— Ralph Marston

September 6

Awaken to experience

Awaken to the wondrous nature of your experience of right now. Let yourself be, let life be, let it all be as magnificent as it is.

Goals and specific objectives are good, useful, satisfying to reach. But there is more to life than knowing what you want and achieving it.

Turn yourself toward the full experience of what is already. Let go for a while of needs, wants, desires, plans and strategies, and sink into the lush, enveloping bliss of existence.

Reacquaint yourself with that part of you where all is well and will ever be. Linger for a time as you energize and refresh your spirit.

Feel not merely what you or anyone else expects you to feel. Feel the authentic, uncorrupted feeling of being you, here and now.

Allow yourself to be swept away for a while by the beauty of pure experience. Then carry with you the new strength you gain as you move on through your life.

— Ralph Marston

September 7

Life well lived

Accept nothing less than truth, competence, responsibility, from yourself and everyone else. Life is too precious, meaningful, and filled with opportunity to conduct yourself in any other way.

Nothing of any lasting, life-enriching value is gained by deception. Nothing good comes of sloppy, half-hearted effort or destructive, irresponsible behavior.

Every moment of every day you have the chance to learn, to love, to experience, to create, to live the truth and the beauty. You can always work to bring about the deeply fulfilling experience of doing your honest and authentic best.

You don’t have to settle for a cheap, flimsy imitation of a life well lived. You deserve the real thing, and have every ability to make it happen.

Yes, a life of genuine excellence has always been a challenge and always will be. Yet within that challenge you are sure to find immense and incomparable value.

Always make the choice that falls on the side of truth, of integrity, of excellence. In every case, it’s the only choice worth making.

— Ralph Marston

September 8

Now is the meaningful time

Don’t delay the meaning in your life. Find it, create it, experience it, live it in every encounter, in every situation.

You can set ambitious goals, make great plans, and follow through with them. But you don’t have to put off life’s richness until some later date in order to do so.

Meaning arises not just from the results and rewards you seek and obtain. There’s much opportunity to experience meaning in the entire process of living.

You’re not doing this activity right now so you can get to the meaningful part of life afterwards. Now is when the meaningful part of life happens.

Fill your awareness with gratitude for the chance to live this time with meaning. Seek to make every little detail resonate with positive purpose.

The meaningful time is now. Embrace the opportunity to deepen your sense of meaning with everything you do.

— Ralph Marston

September 9

Make it your responsibility

Are you looking for someone to blame for a less than optimal experience? One useful place to look is in the mirror.

Have you found that some aspect of life is not all it’s cracked up to be? That’s a good time to honestly examine your own role in the disappointment.

Yes, there are plenty of other people and systems and institutions that can let you down. Yet many of them require your cooperation to do so.

That’s actually a good thing. Because what you’re responsible for, you can control, you can improve, you can optimize.

Maybe your disappointment is largely on you. And that means there’s plenty you can do to transform that disappointment into satisfaction and fulfillment.

Even when it’s not your fault, you can choose to make it your responsibility. Do so, and you’ll empower yourself to leave disappointment far behind.

— Ralph Marston

September 10

Live with excellence

Whatever your objective may be, embed excellence in that objective. Anything you set out to do, seek to do it with excellence.

Excellence demands no less than the best you can give. That in itself is more than enough reason to put excellence into every effort.

Yet the benefits of excellence go further. Excellence sets new standards, gives birth to ideas never before imagined, pushes past what was once considered impossible.

Get yourself around excellence, in art, technology, architecture, business practices, thoughts, performances, presentations. Ignite and sustain your own capacity for excellence by immersing yourself in diverse manifestations of excellence.

Be eager to do the difficult, challenging work that excellence demands. Allow an attitude of excellence to shine its positive, transformative light on every aspect of your world.

Give your miraculous existence the respect and appreciation it so thoroughly deserves. In work and play, in thought and deed, live with excellence.

— Ralph Marston

September 11

Be frustrated

You have plenty of reasons to be frustrated. So go ahead, be frustrated.

Then be done with it, quickly. Allow yourself no more than ten or twenty seconds of pure frustration.

After that time is up, drop the frustration. But hang on to all its energy.

Rotate that energy around to face in a positive direction. Do something useful, productive, transformative with it.

Frustration is a strong signal that something must change. Send that signal to yourself, receive it loud and clear, then get to work on changing things for the better.

Get good and frustrated, but don’t get mired in that frustration. Similar frustrations have led to great achievements for plenty of people, so work to make sure they do the same for you.

— Ralph Marston

September 12

Be real

Say what you think, not what you think they want to hear. Make your choices based on what matters in your life, not based on how they will appear.

It’s an insult to others to second guess how they might perceive you. It’s a disparagement of your own authenticity to play a role that’s not really you.

You can be respectful and considerate without being fake. You can be genuinely impressive by dropping your desire to impress.

When you’re desperate to appear impressive, it’s the desperation that shows. By obsessing over your appearance you ruin that appearance.

Let your pretenses and their accompanying anxieties melt away. Give yourself the permission and the freedom to be you.

What will benefit your life and your world is genuine connection. Be real, be honest, and make that connection every chance you get.

— Ralph Marston

September 13

Your territory

It’s a place, a state of mind, an activity or area of expertise that’s yours, where you know you belong. It’s your territory.

Going there inspires you, replenishes your energy, gives you space to create, achieve, connect with purpose. Just thinking about it can motivate you to persist through whatever you must.

What’s your territory? When was the last time you were there?

You easily recognize your territory because that’s where you experience the magic of flow. It’s where you get the good and meaningful work of life done without friction, where distractions lose their power.

Whatever happens or fails to happen elsewhere, your territory is a place where fulfillment is assured. From within your territory you bring forth great value into all of life.

It’s a powerful place to be. Go there soon, go there often.

— Ralph Marston

September 14

The best choice

The wind blows were it will, and you have no influence over its direction or intensity. Yet you do have control over your own direction, your own intensity.

Sometimes the wind will be in your favor, and other times it will rage against you. Make progress as you can toward a constant purpose, whether that progress comes easy or not.

The obstacles you encounter care nothing about you and your intentions. Rather than cursing them, despising them, or fighting them, just deal with them, work your way beyond them.

If you waste your time and energy on resentment you’ll create even more cause to be resentful. Invest yourself instead in the worthy pursuits that create value.

Though countless factors affect you, only a few of them respond to your actions. Those are the ones to focus on, for doing so will make all the difference in your life.

Obsessing and complaining about what you can’t control gets you nothing, while attending to what you do control can change everything. The best choice is obvious, and it’s a choice that’s always yours.

— Ralph Marston

September 15

Changing your mind

You’re allowed to change your mind. It can actually be a refreshing thing to do, not to mention helpful, productive, and insightful.

It won’t kill you to admit to yourself or others that you were mistaken. Perhaps it could even make the situation a whole lot better.

Sure, it’s a blow to your pride when you acknowledge being wrong, particularly if you’ve been adamant about your position. But is your pride really more important than the truth?

Sincere, honest people admire open-mindedness, and for good reason. Being truly open minded involves an eagerness to change your mind when that’s what the facts call for.

It’s an act of freedom, an act of integrity. It serves to better align you with truth and reality.

When circumstances make it necessary and appropriate, change your mind. Improve your perspective and improve your world.

— Ralph Marston

September 16

The task at hand

What you are least enthusiastic about doing you will be most thankful for having completed. Be generous to your future self, and get the unpleasant stuff done.

A short while from now you can be free of the burden imposed by what you must finish. Envision that desirable state, and eagerly work yourself there.

Resisting the task at hand only makes it more difficult. Let go of the resistance and notice how much lighter you feel.

While you’re at it, let go also of the drama and self pity. Replace them with a sense of pride in your ability to persevere.

If you find yourself wishing to be engaged in something else, remind yourself of this. The more you focus on what you must do right now, the sooner you’ll be able to move on to what you wish you were doing.

Now is when you can make tomorrow brighter and more enjoyable. Now is your chance to finish the task at hand.

— Ralph Marston

September 17

Accept no excuses

Accept no excuses from yourself. You deserve better.

You’ve had a difficult morning, afternoon, and early evening. Even so, as the day draws to a close you can revive your sense of purpose and re-establish your focus.

When you find you’re offering yourself excuses for giving up or slacking off, don’t accept the offer. Instead, remind yourself of how precious your time is and of all you’ve committed to do with that time.

Sure, you have the ability to talk yourself out of making the effort. Fortunately you have just as much ability to talk yourself into it, and a lot better reason to do so.

Yes, that effort can be complicated, frustrating, uncomfortable, and inconvenient. And it can also be highly rewarding.

You deserve life’s best rewards and you deserve the experience of doing the demanding work to attain them. Accept no excuses, and give yourself the fulfilling life you deserve.

— Ralph Marston

September 18

Thankful for your critics

Criticism hurts, especially when it’s based on truth. And criticism helps, particularly when true.

You don’t like to think you’re doing anything wrong, and it’s no fun when someone else points out your shortcomings. But wouldn’t you rather know about it than to continue repeating the error?

Receiving encouragement feels good, and inspires you to take positive action. Receiving criticism might not feel as good, yet it has the power to inspire you just as much as encouragement, perhaps even more.

Sure, people can often criticize you just to hurt you or as an attempted boost to their own egos. Fortunately, you don’t have to take such criticism in the negative spirit in which it’s intended.

Embrace criticism and use it as an opportunity to remind yourself how much better you can do. Experience the sting of criticism and transform its power into motivation, determination, action, and valuable results.

Choose to be thankful for your critics and their criticisms. They provide opportunity for major improvements and repeated success.

— Ralph Marston

September 19

Make excellence

Focus on a corner of your world and infuse it with excellence. Apply effort, focus, creativity, and persistence to produce an environment, an idea, an object, an experience of excellence.

Even if no one ever notices that excellence, you will always know about it. Your life and the lives of others will benefit from it.

An exercise in excellence, no matter how small, spills over into other parts of your world. The habit of engendering excellence, once acquired, raises your expectations for every endeavor you undertake.

Your time is arguably your most precious resource. You owe it to yourself to spend time in ways that yield excellent results.

Dedicate yourself to excellence and it bolsters your ability to meet challenges, makes you more purposeful, and reverberates positively throughout your being. In seeking to create excellence you find yourself living with excellence.

Where you go, with what you do, make excellence for the sake of excellence. Demand excellence from yourself and you’ll experience life at its best.

— Ralph Marston

September 20

Now life happens

Now life happens. Now the enticing music plays and the dance begins.

Now fulfillment springs forth from your choices and actions. Now you make your way through reality, love, abundance, challenge, beauty, joy.

Now sounds resonate, lights sparkle, you walk along the ever-unfolding path of existence. You gather experience, wisdom, insight, adding strength and substance to a life well lived.

Now you stride forth in the direction you’ve always wanted to go. You find satisfaction in creating value that endures.

Now you utilize your skills, energy and resources to the benefit of your world and those with whom you share it. Now you listen, you learn, you care, you develop and implement strategies for moving forward.

The limitless opportunity of now has arrived. Live it with all you have, now.

— Ralph Marston

September 21

Life’s substance

What you once felt, you still are. You carry with you today a lifetime of experience that grows with each new sight, sound, step, breath.

Whatever you do resonates within you for a long time. Realize what an opportunity that is to make life increasingly rich, meaningful, impactful, rewarding.

Over the years you’ll forget many of the details. Yet you’ll always have the living you’ve engaged in.

From every difficult season will eventually come treasures you never could have otherwise known. From bright, pleasant days will come even more.

Take them all in, carry them forward, share those treasures profusely. With your choices each day, create ever more of life’s substance to fill the years to come.

You’re able to spread purpose and meaning across time and space and into all the lives you touch. Marvel at your good fortune and seek to fulfill all the potential it affords you.

— Ralph Marston

September 22

Your dreams are real

Dreams exist for a reason. They’re meant to get your attention, to captivate your imagination.

So pay attention. Imagine with wild abandon.

Of course your dreams are not practical. Yet they are what can drive you to be extremely practical and highly productive in pursuit of their promises.

You’ve pushed your most treasured dreams aside for too long. But they won’t hold that against you.

Indeed, your dreams will welcome your renewed attention by filling you with a sense of positive purpose. They’ll intensify your appreciation for all you’ve been through and illuminate new possibilities of what can be.

The dreams you have for your life, for your world, are as real as anything there is. Now is a great time to bring them fully to life.

— Ralph Marston

September 23

Miracle of it all

Listen as waves roll again and again onto the shore. Watch as the sun gently sinks below the horizon.

Invest the whole of your awareness in the moment you’re in, the place where you are. Notice how completely the spectacular permeates the ordinary.

Gaze long enough in the same direction, and everything you see is beauty upon beauty. Give sufficient discernment to the situation, and its great value and potential become self evident.

Relax your concerns. Face the possibilities.

Let yourself be so consumed with gratitude that gratitude is not even close to enough. Then act upon your most sincere and loving instinct to expand upon the miracle of it all.

Shiny, dusty, old and new, simple, complex, soft and hard, everything joins in the magnificent spectacle. And here you are to know it, share it, carry it forward.

— Ralph Marston

September 24

That’s inspiration

Are you waiting for inspiration before getting to work? You’ve got it backwards.

Inspiration doesn’t just come to you out of the blue. Inspiration comes from what you do.

Are you wondering where you’ll find inspiration? You’ll find it by participating in life to the fullest extent possible.

You’ll find inspiration in your encouragement of others, in your acts of generosity, in tackling difficult challenges. You’ll find inspiration when you stop searching for it and start attracting it to the energy with which you live your life.

When you’re not inspired to get started that’s all the more reason to do precisely that. Get started and get the inspiration flowing.

Bring the spirit inside you to the surface where you can see it in action, hear it speaking, feel it making a difference in the world. That’s inspiration.

— Ralph Marston

September 25

Merely trying

Trying too hard is not much more effective than hardly trying. If you perceive any effort as trying, that has a way of sabotaging the effort.

Even when you’re highly motivated, seeing yourself as trying blocks you from seeing yourself as succeeding. The word itself focuses you on struggling rather than achieving.

Let go of the thought that you’re trying. See yourself instead as steadily making progress.

Feel how much better that is. Notice the immediate increase in your energy level and creativity, the elevation of your expectations.

Every action, every step, no matter how large or small, no matter how fast or slow, gets you closer to your goal. That’s a whole lot more valuable than merely trying.

Once you have an intention, skip the trying. Go ahead, step right up, and with one positive action after another, get it done.

— Ralph Marston

September 26

Everyday goodness

Going through your normal day to day activities, you’ll encounter plenty of opportunities for giving a little boost to the experience of life for yourself and others. Make the most of those opportunities.

Such ordinary instances of goodness might seem trivial. Yet they have a much larger positive impact than you might imagine.

The big, impressive acts of benevolence and attainment receive plenty of attention, but that’s because they are so few and far between. Everyday goodness, on the other hand, reaches people often, when and where they live, in ways that are wholly relatable.

A smile and a kind comment might only affect one single person, yet for that person, it can improve their whole outlook. That positivity could very well spread to others.

Make the offering of small goodness into such a habit that you don’t even notice it. You can be sure, however, that many people will notice.

Such everyday goodness costs you nothing while creating real value in people’s lives, including yours. Make a little goodness every time you can, and somebody’s sure to benefit.

— Ralph Marston

September 27

The most fulfilling path

Acknowledge your disappointment, but don’t feed it. Don’t be complicit in making it bigger than it already is.

You’re capable of living with the disappointment without centering your life around it. No day, no situation is entirely perfect, yet every day can be fulfilling and enriching.

Discover how much energy you can put into creating that fulfillment and bringing forth that richness. See what happens when you focus on the opportunities that are always present.

Certainly the disappointment is real. Yet so is the positive potential of right now.

Though you can’t choose every detail of every situation, you can choose your response. And therein exists the beauty of living your life as a unique and adept individual.

Keep on choosing the most fulfilling path forward, unswayed by accolades, difficulties, discomforts and delights. There’s more good to be done, and your best choice is to do it.

— Ralph Marston

September 28

Make something good happen

Want to make yourself happy? Then make yourself useful.

Want to make yourself relevant? Then make yourself do the work of bringing new value into existence.

You’re built from the inside out to solve problems, work through challenges, recognize and capitalize on opportunities. You’re sure to find great satisfaction in putting those capabilities to work.

What situations in your vicinity right now could be improved upon? Pick the one you’re most familiar with and go to work on it.

Give yourself a project that will be of benefit to the world. Feel the rush of energy that comes when you’re involved in making a difference.

Experience life at its best by immersing yourself in the work you do best. This is your chance to make something good happen.

— Ralph Marston

September 29

Now is ready

No one you know currently has any time other than now. Every person, everything that exists, is now.

So what are you going to do with it all, right now? How will you make the most of the abundance and the possibilities that whirl around you, right now?

You’ve been in similar situations before, all your life as a matter of fact. You’ve gained new richness from every moment you’ve been through and you’re in the process of doing so again, right now.

You can’t be sure what changes will happen later, yet you’re able to see how the world currently is. Now you can make good use of that clarity.

Skills are now, opportunities are now, and here you are, able to transform intention into reality. The possibilities are too consequential to ignore.

Now is ready for what can be done with it. The next move is up to you.

— Ralph Marston

September 30

Do life

Don’t just speculate about it. Do it and find out for sure.

Go beyond merely watching it on a screen. Experience the many dimensions of reality firsthand.

Stop putting off the fulfillment that is yours to create. Put time firmly on your side by doing something truly meaningful with it.

Somewhere there’s a river flowing out from a glacier that will inspire you with its beauty. There’s someone feeling lonely who will be uplifted by spending time with you.

You have so many options for the enrichment of life. Exercise some of them, and you’ll end up with even more.

Shake off the dust, venture a little bit away from what’s familiar, and do life. Discover all over again how good you are at being you.

— Ralph Marston