Daily Motivator - February

[bluidkiti]

February 1

Widen your vision

Focus can be good, valuable, and like every valuable thing it is also costly. While you focus on one thing you necessarily blind yourself to everything else.

For this reason, whether you’ve been focused on positive achievement or on negative despair, there are things you’ve missed. Your vision of the options and resources available to you, is incomplete.

Consider that whatever you’ve been through in the past has hidden some of your best opportunities of the present. It’s time to let go of the conflicts, defeats, and victories that are over, so you can gain access to the possibilities that are now.

Whatever you’ve been focused on, whether a desire, a frustration, a challenge, allow it to fall cleanly away from your awareness for a while. Open your eyes, open your mind, open your willingness to discover a new and better way forward.

You don’t have to abandon your goals and ambitions, and your problems will not magically go away. However, you can benefit greatly from widening your vision for a while, to consider options that your focus and commitment may have hidden from you.

Don’t let your powerful focus lock you into tunnel vision, and don’t let your persistence degrade into stubbornness. Widen your vision every now and then, take a look around, and make sure you’re not ignoring your best possibilities.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 2

Grow stronger

New strength begins with your willingness to be stronger. Once you choose inside to be stronger, you are.

Decide to be more resilient, and you have what it takes to live up to that decision. Commit to be more courageous, more disciplined, more purposeful, more tolerant and generous, and suddenly you are.

No person, no situation, no deficiency is stopping you from growing in strength with every experience. It’s a choice you can make again and again.

It’s easy to hide from your own potential strength, and many people will enable you to do so. But your better choice is to connect with that strength, put it to good use, and make more of it.

What if some of the things that previously filled you with dismay and fear, were suddenly to inspire courage and determination? What if you decided that yes, you can do some good and useful thing you’ve always told yourself you could never do?

The strength you have is the strength you choose to allow and develop in your life. Think strong, act strong, and grow stronger with each passing day.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 3

Embrace the magnificence

All of time and existence has led up to you being here on this day. See the beauty, feel the wonder, and resolve to make good and meaningful use of it all.

Realize the great value of the moment you’re in, taking care not to rush through it. Give to it your intention, guided by true purpose.

Live now as though you’ve been denied the chance up until this moment. Approach even the smallest experience with fresh, new enthusiasm.

Face the world with confidence and a genuine desire to make a difference. Live in awe of the great possibilities, with a commitment to bring the best of them to life.

This is your life, here and now. This is your life, your opportunity to deepen its meaning, and add to its richness.

Draw energy and inspiration from all you encounter. Embrace the magnificence, and find great satisfaction in making even more.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 4

Great opportunity of now

There are no good excuses, and it wouldn’t matter if there were. Your life is the way it is, and now is your opportunity to do something with it.

If there are problems, now is when you can stop dwelling on those problems and start taking action to resolve them. If you have dreams, goals, ambitions, here is where the wishing and fantasizing end, and the action begins.

What counts now is the same for anything you want to be, or plan to accomplish, or need to do. What counts now is actually doing it.

Put your wishes into action, put your plans into motion. Step right up to the challenges and begin to push yourself through them.

If something is standing in your way, move it, change it, get around it, or find another way. Work with what you have, expand upon it, commit to persistent action, and make good things happen.

Whatever the circumstance, whatever the objective, this is your time to act. Give yourself over to the great opportunity of now.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 5

What you appreciate

Want to quickly escape your negative attitude? Find something you can appreciate.

Looking to uncover the hidden value in a difficult situation? Figure out what it is about that situation you can appreciate.

Step into the room, into the job, into the challenge with the intention of discovering what you can appreciate. What you’ll find are powerful ways and reasons that will pull you forward.

At the beginning of each day, mentally pick something you can truly appreciate, and carry it out into the world with you. All day long, let it serve as a shield against any negativity you encounter.

When meeting a new person, don’t fret about making a good impression. Instead, focus on finding what you can appreciate about that person, and get the relationship off to a great start.

What you appreciate about life becomes more valuable, to you and everyone else. See how much you can appreciate, and see how much real treasure you can uncover.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 6

Special occasion

Give yourself the gift of a meaningful moment, every moment. Let your life absorb and experience the rich substance of life, in everything you do.

Don’t sit idle, waiting and hoping for a special occasion. The special occasion is here, now, always, and it is your life.

Adventure is not just found in distant, exotic locales. Adventure is yours to live whenever you choose, wherever you are.

Life is adventurous, special, fulfilling, to the extent you enable and allow and encourage it to be. Live this occasion as the special occasion it truly is.

Go ahead and remind yourself how fortunate you are to be you. Celebrate the special occasion that is right now, and magnify the joy by sharing it with all those around you.

Fill your heart with gratitude for the special occasion of now. And make it even more so.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 7

Try a little patience

Some matters are genuinely urgent. Most other things are not, but there’s often a strong underlying pressure, from yourself and others, to treat them as urgent.

The trouble is, making everything urgent wears you down. Addressing every little issue like it’s a dramatic, life and death matter drains your life of real meaning and joy.

By all means, tend to the really urgent situations with your full speed and attention. With everything else, try a little patience, with a generous amount of understanding thrown in.

Take a moment to take a deep breath. Remind yourself of the distinction between what really matters and what merely stokes everyone’s ego, including yours.

Do you really need to raise your anxiety level just because a delivery takes three days instead of two? Think of all the good, enjoyable, fulfilling activities with which you could replace the worrying and fretting.

Soothe your own life, and the lives of others, with a little patience. Give things some time, and enjoy the time you give.

— Ralph Marston

[willbe275]

DEEP.....

[bluidkiti]

February 8

Pick your possibilities

The possibilities are endless, and that’s great. Just don’t let yourself get overwhelmed or sidetracked by all those possibilities.

Pick certain meaningful possibilities and go with them, focus on them, commit to them. Persist with them until you see them through.

Yes, it’s tempting and useful to explore new possibilities. But even the best possibility is useless if you don’t make a firm commitment to sticking with it.

Channel your excitement about what’s possible into actually bringing specific possibilities to life. Be as eager to get the work completed as you are to get the project started.

Follow through on the enticing promises by keeping those promises with disciplined effort. Translate what’s possible into specific goals and then do the work to achieve those goals.

Position yourself to do great things by acknowledging you can’t do everything. Pick your possibilities, stick with them, and bring their value to life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 9

Fresh start

Today is a fresh start. Make something good with it.

You’ve learned a lot about how life unfolds, what works, what doesn’t, what holds you back, what moves you forward. Now is your chance to put all that knowledge to good use.

You’ve seen the mistakes that others have made, and your own mistakes as well. Today you can benefit from those observations, avoiding the pitfalls as you work to make good progress.

You’ve felt the sting of regret and the joy of purposeful achievement. Beginning right now, you can choose to create much more joy and much less regret.

Here is where your future begins. Be honest with yourself about what you really want to do, to experience, to become, for every choice leads you in a specific direction.

Go ahead, feel the miracle of life as it glows within you, and fill your world with purpose, with meaning. Take the fresh start that begins right now, and live, and love, and give, and grow.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 10

Up to the challenge

You are up to the challenge. You can do the work and reach the value that’s yours to claim on the other side of that challenge.

You can take hold of impossible tasks, break them down into manageable chunks, and get them done. You can gather the information, find the resources, and develop the skills necessary for the job.

You can make decisions and then implement them. You can build on what works and make adjustments to what doesn’t.

You can stay connected to your driving purpose, motivated and enthusiastic through every difficulty. You can express that purpose in a way that inspires others to share your enthusiasm.

You can draw positive energy even from negative situations. You can identify weakness and transform it into strength.

You can do whatever it takes, and now is your time to act. Your next achievement is ready for you to bring it to life.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 11

Intentional energy

What’s the difference between the energy of destruction and the energy of achievement? The difference is in your intention.

Negative energy does not force you to take negative actions. Rather, negative energy is what happens when you focus your energy in a negative direction.

The same physical energy used in warfare can instead be used to grow food, build homes, provide medical care, and countless other good things. Energy, regardless of its original source, can be put to positive use.

The energy generated within you by frustration can be applied toward focused, disciplined achievement. The energy arising from anger can be redirected toward care and nurturing.

You can draw energy from anything that happens and then use that energy precisely as you choose. Rather than being a slave to the circumstances, you can be the master of your own response, of your own intentions.

Be clear with yourself about all you value, all you love, all you’re thankful for and care about. Make use of the energy in your life to advance and support those good things.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 12

Eaten alive

Are you being eaten alive by a monster that does not even exist? Have your highest thoughts and best moments been sucked away by a demon with no actual form or substance?

You are wise to be concerned, and to do something about those concerns. But it is foolish to contaminate your awareness and paralyze your life with useless worry.

What perfectly good thing have you started and then stopped, worried what others would think? What goal, what dream have you declined to achieve, worried about problems you could easily have solved?

Worry waters down your enthusiasm, cancels your best plans, and hands you nothing but regret in return. Let this be the day you walk away from all that.

Let this be the moment you face your fears, challenges, limitations, and act to do something about them. Rather than being hobbled with worry, choose now to put the power of your imagination to purposeful use, spurring you into action.

Be smart, be realistic, be wary, but don’t be worried. Feel your strength, express that strength with action, and rise above every useless worry.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 13

Lingering complications

Maybe the question or problem you’re faced with doesn’t have a good answer, or at least not one you can find right away. And maybe you can be okay with that.

Perhaps, despite all your best efforts, not everything gets resolved before the end of the day or end of the week. And maybe you can get a great night’s sleep, and have a delightful weekend, nonetheless.

Sure, it’s fine to get all the issues resolved, tied up in a nice, neat conclusion. But it’s not essential, and it rarely happens like that anyway.

You can live a great life for a long time, even with lingering complications and unanswered questions. Don’t put your life on hold waiting for all the problems to be solved.

Living a rich and joyous life does not prevent you from resolving the difficult issues. On the contrary, it helps you prioritize things and discover effective ways to deal with them.

Work diligently to solve the problems, to get the answers. While you do, live well, gently refusing to let anything keep you down.

— Ralph Marston

[bluidkiti]

February 14

Worth the effort

Your whole life has led to this day, today. Remind yourself to spend today in a way that’s worthy of the investment.

Every moment you’ve been through has brought you to this moment. Every effort you’ve ever made has laid the groundwork for what you’re about to do now.

And now, you can live in a way that makes it all worth the effort. You can seize this opportunity you’ve built for yourself, and experience its richness in full.

You are here, witness to the dawning of this day, and that’s an amazing accomplishment. Feel the vast extent of that accomplishment, and be inspired to add much more on top of it.

Take a deep, slow breath, filled with the energy of possibility. You can thrive in the face of whatever may come, for you’ve already done so again and again.

You’re here, now, when you can live, where you can act, ready to gain new ground. Let your love for the best that you’ve known, continue to pull you toward the best that can be.

— Ralph Marston