Daily Motivator - August

[bluidkiti]

August 1

Confronting fear

There are times when you must run from what frightens you. It’s a natural reaction and one that protects you from harm.

But it can also be important to approach, investigate, and seek to become familiar with what you’re afraid of. For your fears point toward opportunities for strengthening your courage.

By confronting a particular fear you experience your own ability to do so. That can help you to avoid or escape the grip of other fears.

Life certainly has its dangers, and you’re wise to maintain a level of fear toward them. Yet sometimes you must act in the face of fear, and it’s good to give yourself experience at doing that.

Small children understand this, and often become highly curious about life’s frightening aspects. That’s not a desire to hide from fear, but an attempt at learning how to navigate a perilous world.

Such skills are valuable to know, to practice, and to strengthen. Identify fears that you can reasonably confront, and grow your courage by doing so.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

Happy August my dear friends,
I hope and prayed that you had an awesome
July. Let's thank God for getting us though
The Month of July safe and sound.
God bless you as we prepare our
Journey through the month of August
one day at a time. Much love to
and your familys.

[bluidkiti]

August 2

Challenge your thoughts

Your first thoughts about a particular situation are likely not your best thoughts on it. When you can, give those thoughts time to be challenged and improved by other thoughts.

Distance yourself from the circumstances and mindset you were in when you first had the thoughts. Alter your perspective and enable your thoughts to run in a different direction.

It’s great to jump quickly into action when you think of what must be done. But it can also be wise not to jump too quickly.

That’s especially true when you’re operating in unfamiliar territory. If you have a brilliant idea for what to do, and you’ve never done it before, seriously scrutinize that idea, and run it by others if you can.

An important part of being creative and resourceful is having the humility to recognize your initial plans could be way off base. It’s entirely appropriate to have confidence that you can get it right while also acknowledging that’s not likely to happen instantly.

Think innovative, creative thoughts, then expand your creativity by questioning those thoughts. Do what it takes to get yourself from the first idea all the way to the best idea.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 3

Easy is not worth it

Easy is overrated. The best option is not usually the easiest option.

It’s easy to complain but much better to solve the problem you’re complaining about. It’s easy to wish for the outcome you desire but better to take action and make it happen.

Doing only what’s easy won’t improve your skills or leave you with any lasting sense of accomplishment. The easy path is not the most interesting or fulfilling one.

The most meaningful times are not the easiest times. Much of what makes life good comes to the forefront when life is difficult.

Easy is a promise that rarely lives up to expectations. What’s easy in the moment often leads to regret over time.

Be wary of giving up time, opportunity, meaning and value in exchange for ease. Usually, easy is not worth the cost, and you have a lot of better options.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

Easy Does But, Do It.

[bluidkiti]

August 4

What you complain about

You draw into your life what you focus on. One powerful, negative way to direct your focus is by complaining.

As a result, the people and circumstances that exert influence over your life can be the ones you complain most loudly about. Your complaints have the effect of perpetuating themselves.

Your focus, in and of itself, does not cause things to happen in the external world. However, your focus does have a significant impact on the way you perceive and react to what happens in your world.

So by complaining about something, you expand its presence in your life. Fortunately, you have much better alternatives for directing your focus.

You can focus less on what you despise and more on what you love. You can focus on solutions to problems rather than on who is to blame and the harm they cause.

Let your thoughts be occupied by positive possibilities, not by repeated complaints. Instead of complaining, you can always choose to focus on thoughts that lead your life in satisfying and beneficial directions.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 5

The strength of patience

Patience is an excellent way of getting time to work in your favor. One moment of patience can prevent years of problems and conflicts.

Patience does not mean an absence of action. Patience is taking action at a pace that permits deliberation and thoughtfulness.

Patience helps you avoid mistakes. It shields you from needless anxiety and frustration.

With patience you’re able to develop rich and fruitful levels of understanding. Patience brings you closer to people, places, and things that are initially distant.

Are you seeking to resolve a difficult problem, or to reach an ambitious goal? Consider the powerful role that patience can play in doing so.

Those who are truly strong often reveal and exercise their strength with patience. Those who are patient grow even stronger.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 6

Your potential

There was a time when you had great potential. You still do.

Much of your potential has gone unrealized. Of course it has, but that’s okay.

Just because you cannot do everything is no reason to avoid doing something. Just because you have not fully lived up to your potential is no reason to turn your back on it.

Your potential is eager to forgive you for any time you’ve spent ignoring it, whether that has been weeks or decades. Even more so, your potential is eager for you to put it to use.

There are many things in this life you’ve always cared about. You have plenty of possible ways, right now, to put that care, that love, that fascination, curiosity and ambition into action.

You have great potential, and there’s a great reason for it. By fulfilling your highest potential you make life good, for yourself, for everyone.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 7

Make beauty

Make beauty, make excellence. Create sincere expressions of truth.

Carry yourself forward with honor, with dignity, with a reverence for all the goodness that is possible. Live up to the potential of the moment, every moment.

Act as though you understand and appreciate how good you have it. Be the embodiment of life that life so earnestly seeks to know.

Have the courage to live the adventure that begins right where you are. Let the past continue to guide you in experiencing a future that never ceases to excite you.

Love in such an authentic way that no love is ever lost. Forge connections with reality that transcend all time and space.

Remember all you have always known you can be. Now is when.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 8

Balance that stays in balance

Effective balance is not a matter of countering one extreme with an opposite extreme. You cannot eat everything in sight one day and then nothing the next day and expect to achieve nutritional balance.

To address any imbalance, seek to rein in that specific imbalance. Adding a similar amount of imbalance in another direction just gets you more out of balance.

When you suffer because of an imbalance in your life, taking drastic measures might seem an appealing way to fix it quickly. But a situation that took a long time to build will take time to fix, and calls for an approach you can sustain over the long haul.

It’s useful to know and understand the extremes, and to occasionally experience them. Yet you’ll wear yourself out if you spend all your time negotiating between them.

Balance must be maintained for it to have value. Move toward the sort of balance that facilitates momentum.

Use your time and energy to move forward rather than swinging back and forth between extremes. Enjoy the benefits of a balance that stays in balance.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 9

Go where purpose leads

Zero in on a purpose for today. Enumerate the ways you intend to make a difference.

Bring the adventure to life. Feel exhilaration as you live out the mission you have assigned yourself.

Then decide on what you’ll do to extend the experience tomorrow. Keep on living with purpose, producing benefits for your world and yourself.

Give in fully to those aspects of life you care most about. Let meaningful purpose get you going and keep you going.

As the minutes fly by, seize upon their fleeting opportunities and transform them into enduring value. Make time your friend by making it your workplace.

Purpose takes you to good fulfilling places. Make the choice to go where it leads.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 10

What you’re able to do

Many factors in your life are beyond your control, and will always be. But that doesn’t mean you’re helpless.

You cannot control the weather or the progression of the seasons. Yet you can control your own actions to prepare and equip yourself for the weather you’re likely to encounter.

You cannot rid the world of all the viruses and bacterial pathogens that cause serious disease. What you can do is practice good hygiene and make the healthy choices that enable your miraculous immune system to fight off those germs.

The thoughts, opinions, words, and actions of other people are not under your control. However, by carefully controlling your own behavior, you can shield yourself from most of the damaging behaviors of others.

It is futile to seek control over many of life’s most pervasive influences. Instead, put your thoughts, your time, your energy into making and carrying out the most effective choices within what you do control.

Although some options will always be beyond your reach, many good ones are still available to you. Live so that what you’re able to do more than makes up for what you’re unable to do.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 11

All the good you do

Your ego will never be satisfied. Whenever you manage to obtain what it desires, it reacts by wanting more.

That’s an empty, frustrating road you don’t have to go down. At any point you can choose another path.

There’s no need for constantly seeking ways to exhibit how great you are. It’s tiring for you and tiresome to others.

Instead, set about to discover how genuinely good, useful, kind, and encouraging you can be. Seek authentic experiences, connections, relationships that uphold truth at their center.

Ego tempts you with promises of thrills and adulations that it never fully delivers upon. Yet you can resist that temptation with a life of goodness and sustainable quality.

To truly experience satisfaction, stop endlessly chasing it. Instead, allow lasting satisfaction and fulfillment to flow from all the good, kind, and helpful things you do.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 12
Exercise your effectiveness

Just because you’ve failed once or twice does not mean you’ll always fail. Just because a particular action brought no positive results does not mean all further action is futile.

There’s much you have learned from your past experiences. But those experiences have not taught you everything there is to know.

You are not helpless, and your situation is not hopeless. There exist right now some specific actions with which you can bring about a positive, transformative result.

Those actions are not immediately obvious, and they won’t be easy. Nonetheless, they are possible for you and available to you.

Commit yourself to determining what you can do, and to following through with it. Expect to find a workable way forward, then be the force that fulfills that expectation.

Seize upon the opportunity to exercise your effectiveness, to make a meaningful difference. Use your power, your faith, your persistence, and bring new goodness to life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

August 13

The value of hope

Hope alone will not bring what you hope for. But that doesn’t mean it lacks value.

Hope focuses your attention on the positive possibilities. And where your attention is focused is where your energy is directed.

Hope infects your expectations, points them toward a positive outcome. Those expectations drive your perceptions, your behavior, and affect your results.

Hope for the best but don’t stop there. Hope for the best, then let hope push you into action and sustain that action for as long as necessary.

Have so much hope that you get up and do something useful and effective with it, again and again. Do the work that hope demands rather than expecting hope to do all the work.

Hope has great value, but it’s not an easy way out. At its best, hope points you in the most challenging and fulfilling way forward, and that’s a very good way to be headed.

— Ralph Marston