Daily Motivator - August

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August 15

Doubting yourself

Other people are likely at times to doubt what you say. So get a jump on them, and exercise some healthy doubt of your own.

Be the first to challenge yourself, genuinely and robustly. That prepares you well to respond to the challenges of others.

Think of the ways you could be wrong, then work through them. By so doing you’ll improve your ability to be right.

Take care not to get trapped in your own perspective. Make it a point to look at that perspective with some degree of skepticism.

When you’re truly willing to change your own mind you’ll have greater power to change someone else’s mind. Know how to get past your own doubt and you’ll learn how to get past other doubt.

Yes, by all means have confidence in yourself and in what you have to say. Strengthen that confidence by testing it, and improving it, with doubt.

— Ralph Marston

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August 16

Are you, can you, will you?

Life has something important to tell you. Are you listening?

Today contains valuable opportunities, some of which will never exist again. Are you prepared to act on them?

Wonder and beauty surround you. Are you attuned to them, and open to being inspired?

Problems, obstacles, and challenges constantly arise. Can you appreciate and embrace their value?

People are impossible to fully understand. Can you love them for who they are?

There’s so much to learn, to experience, to work through, to give. Will you?

— Ralph Marston

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August 17

The quality you put in

Know where you want to go. Start where you are.

Understand what is necessary. Make use of what you have.

Invest the time as it comes your way. Persist until you reach your objective.

Learn from every consequence. Improve with every effort.

Success is not a foregone conclusion. Yet it is well within your reach.

Life is largely a matter of what you do with it, moment upon moment, day after day. The quality you’re willing to put in determines the quality you’re able to experience.

— Ralph Marston

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August 18

Reality as it unfolds

Has any experience ever ended up being not as bad as you thought it would be? Have you ever done something that turned out to be more difficult than you had previously assumed?

Don’t let fear stop you from moving into the future. But do prepare yourself as well as you can.

You cannot know exactly how anything is going to play out. You can, however, equip yourself to handle many different contingencies.

Probably nothing you do is going to be perfect, but neither is the whole world likely to fall to pieces. The reality, when you actually arrive there, falls somewhere in the middle.

Within that middle ground is opportunity to improve the experience, to create more value from it. Muster the courage to step forward tempered with the discipline to be reasonable and prepared.

In between your best expectations and your worst fears, you’ll find plenty of ground upon which to move into the future. Acknowledge and embrace reality as it unfolds, knowing there’s always good you can make of it.

— Ralph Marston

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August 19

What works

It sounds good, the experts give it praise, it has popular support. But will it get the job done, solve the problem, reach the goal?

In the end what matters is one thing. Does it work?

Speculation is useful but not definitive. Planning, preparation, expertise, and experience all can help, but do not guarantee success.

You must find out what works, for the situation, for the time, for you and everyone else involved. To do that, you have to make a specific attempt and then make sure you’re honest about the results.

You’ll find out soon enough whether the approach works or whether it doesn’t. If it works, stick with it and if it doesn’t, move on and attempt something different.

Go beyond the noisy hypothesizing and put forth the effort to know for sure. Figure out what works, and then do it.

— Ralph Marston

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August 20

Better than anger

Your anger is justified and understandable. But it’s not very healthy or helpful, and it doesn’t feel so great.

You don’t have to carry that anger around, letting it weigh you down. You can transform it into a more positive force.

Instead of being angry about a particular problem, perhaps you could fix the problem. Even though you didn’t cause it, you can have the good fortune of being the person who solves it.

Seething about what’s already happened won’t bring new value into your life. Yet taking positive action to improve the situation can benefit you and a whole lot of other people.

Let go of the need to exact punishment and retribution. Fill yourself instead with the desire to promote goodness, cooperation, and understanding.

You can do a whole lot better than anger. Get creative, identify an alternative, and choose not to let anger wear you down.

— Ralph Marston

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August 21

Bestow a little goodness

Every aspect of your life is connected to every other aspect. Negativity, indolence, or negligence in one area can weigh down your whole world.

Fortunately, a little goodness in one corner of your experience can begin to lift up all the other parts of your life. When you value and nurture and support that goodness, it will grow.

Find a new place where you can inject a little positivity. Once you do, you’ll discover other opportunities for doing so in your own life and in the lives of others.

Often you cannot do anything directly about the troubles that descend on your world. Yet you can balance those troubles, and even overwhelm them, with goodness in other places.

You won’t be able to solve every problem. However, you can always do something real and genuine and beneficial.

Bestow a little goodness in your world when you can, where you can. Push life in an upward direction, and keep up the good effort.

— Ralph Marston

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August 22

Make time your friend

The world is always enticing you to live for the moment. Just remember that the moment will soon pass.

The consequences of what you do right now, or fail to do, can be immense. And they continue to impact your life for a long time to come.

Yes, live well in the moment and make the most of it. But don’t do so at the expense of all your future moments.

When you pursue a small, immediate pleasure, are you sacrificing long-term fulfillment or well being? Make sure the cost you will eventually pay does not far outweigh whatever benefit you get right now.

Even better, choose actions now that result in continuing value later. Invest your present moments while you have them rather than mortgaging your future before you even get there.

Live and act such that whatever you do today makes tomorrow better, not worse. With your choices, make time your friend, enabling it to bring you a good and fulfilling future.

— Ralph Marston

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August 23

Listen

Listen, with humility, with curiosity, with a genuine desire to help. Listen, without the need to prove anything, free of any assumptions about what you will hear.

Listen and learn. Listen and understand.

Listen and allow your perspective to be challenged. Listen and enable yourself to become more broadly informed, more considerate, more capable of having a positive impact.

Listen to the noise and draw energy from it. Listen to the silence and find the peace that lives within you.

Listen to gentle rain, booming thunder, whispers, shouts, harmony and cacophony. Listen, and hear life in all its glory, contrast, and richness.

Listen to time as it unfolds, to life as it grows in meaning and depth. Listen, then speak in your own voice about all you hear.

— Ralph Marston

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August 24

Richness and variety

There are plenty of places, near and far, you’ve never been to. Choose one and pay it a visit.

There are all sorts of people you have never met. Make it your business to get to know one of them.

Life is filled with points of view you’ve never considered, disciplines you don’t understand. Devote some meaningful time to explore a few of them.

Is it worth even a few minutes to hear someone express the same opinion for the one hundred and forty seventh time? See if you can spend those minutes instead being surprised anew by the richness and variety of life.

What’s along the road you’ve never walked down? What enjoyable and fulfilling experiences do you not even know you’re missing?

Don’t let your spirit be imprisoned by the seduction of all that’s comfortable and familiar. Though you’ll never experience all there is to experience, you can always keep moving in that rewarding direction.

— Ralph Marston

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August 25

Ownership of your attitude

What makes you feel better, what makes you feel worse? Could it be you, and how you choose to see life, to live life?

In the exact same situation, one person can be ecstatic and another person miserable. That’s pretty conclusive proof that attitude matters more than circumstance.

Maybe it is soothing to imagine events that conspired against you could soon turn around and come to your rescue. But it’s far more empowering to stand up and take responsibility.

Do you really need to indulge in this or that to feel better, or run away and hide? Or could you find it in yourself to elevate your attitude right where you are, as you are?

Yes, life is too much one way and not enough another way, unfair, oppressive, troublesome and complicated. But rather than being resentful and dismayed, what if you were inspired and energized by the positive possibilities?

Responsibility is there for the taking. See what happens when you let go of excuses and take ownership of your attitude.

— Ralph Marston

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August 26

Do what must be done

Don’t avoid it, or worry about it, or construct elaborate excuses. Just go ahead and do what must be done.

Liberate yourself from self-imposed privation, disillusion, and lethargy. Energize your spirit, activate your skills, shake off the guilt and hesitation, and do what must be done.

Reward yourself with the fulfilling experience of being an active participant in your world, your life, your forward progress. Invigorate your awareness of all the good things that are possible by watching yourself as you make a real difference.

Today’s clock is already ticking away. Before another moment vanishes forever, begin to transform the fleeting time into enduring value.

Do what you know are the essential, beneficial, enriching things to do. Do what you are certain you would regret if you failed to do it.

Grab the opportunity of right now by pushing yourself into action. Live life in the most meaningful and rewarding way possible by doing what must be done.

— Ralph Marston

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August 27

Put your values into action

The most powerful argument is not an argument at all. The most powerful argument is a good and fulfilling life.

The values and opinions you preach about will mostly just annoy people. Yet the positive results you achieve will cause those same people to seek you out.

Anybody can say anything, can scold, speculate, theorize, and make all sorts of fantastic promises. Yet what really matters is what you achieve, the difference you make in your own life and the lives of others.

There’s something you can do today to make tomorrow better than it otherwise would have been. You have the opportunity to put your values into action rather than just putting them into words.

Yes, what you say can be powerful. But it has to align with what you do, or your words ring hollow and meaningless.

Give more than lip service to what you care about. Give your time, your resources, your continuing effort, and embed your values deeply into life by the way you live.

— Ralph Marston

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August 28

Choose well

What are you choosing right now? What will it add to or take away from your life?

The circumstances of your world do not just appear out of thin air. Many of them come from intentional or habitual choices, and a large portion of those choices are yours.

Some choices provide quick, trivial, pleasurable benefits at the expense of significant costs that come later. The problem with those choices is that later does eventually come.

Other choices impose burdens on you initially. Yet as you continue to willingly shoulder the burdens, those choices result in great, enduring value.

Any given moment offers countless options, with each one leading to even more options. Your ability to choose among those options provides immense opportunity.

Take that opportunity seriously, thoughtfully, and choose well. The quality of your life depends on your choices.

— Ralph Marston

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August 29

Go deep

Dwell on a thing of substance. Spend more than a few seconds, more than a few minutes, in meaningful focus.

Pick a place where you can dive deeply into some specific aspect of life, and see how deep you can go. Find out how long you can stay there.

Do you seek a meaningful connections to life, to reality, to your own nature, to the lives of others? Then you must invest time and effort in those connections.

If you flitter endlessly from this new thing to the next new thing, what does that accomplish? It fills you with content but empties you of context, of purpose, of meaning.

It’s great to discover new places, meet new people, learn and experience new things. But if you immediately abandon them all in the hopes of getting more, what’s the point?

Embrace novelty, but not to such an extent that your life has no depth. Go deep, and make enduring connections with knowledge, with people, with experience, with what is real.

— Ralph Marston