Daily Motivator - January

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January 1

Now is pure possibility. Live joy fully in its newborn splendor.

What seem to be limitations consist mostly of faint echoes from a reality that no longer exists. Now is as fresh as the breath you just drew in, vibrant with energy and richness.

You transcend another year, and another. The timeless purpose and love at your center, grow in abundance as they flow out from you.

Gather new beauty and carry new hope as you skip across the moments. Embrace the miracles your mind cannot explain and your heart cannot deny.

Celebrate the pure possibility of now by transforming it into new goodness. Jump at the exhilarating chance to invest your thought, action and passion.

Here, now, time and beauty, love, possibility, energy and abundance all converge. Feel the immensity of opportunity, honor it and draw upon it in every choice you make.

— Ralph Marston

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January 2

Make new progress

After disappointment, take positive action. After success and achievement, take positive action.

What matters now is not what has already happened. What matters now is that you can focus your energy, your awareness to make new progress.

Discouragement is never the best choice, and neither is complacency. Whether you’ve failed miserably or succeeded spectacularly, don’t keep yourself stuck there.

This new moment glimmers with fresh potential and opportunities never seen before. Take up the unique challenge that is now, and make new progress.

Don’t let your ego lock you into a sad, small box where it’s all about you and what you’ve already done. Utilize your past not as a place of refuge, but as a springboard from which to jump into new levels of effectiveness.

The rewards and tokens of achievement are nice, yet you never stop longing for the act of achievement. Go ahead, satisfy that longing, for now is when.

— Ralph Marston

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January 3

Give goodness to life

Maybe no one will notice the good you do today. Or perhaps thousands, even millions will take note.

Yet what matters is not whether anyone knows about it. What matters is that you do it, that you make a difference, that you add value and substance to life.

It’s easy to get distracted by the trophies and accolades, the drama, intrigue and glittering edifices. But such hollow tokens will not satisfy your deep longing to make a difference.

Today is your opportunity to give goodness to life. You have the time, the skills, the resources, wisdom and desire to be a beneficial influence in the world.

You have the chance to arrive at the end of this day knowing you contributed to it in a positive way. Today you can accrue treasures in your heart that never go away, adding warmth to all your days.

Let love, purpose, kindness and generosity drive you to give goodness to life. And create richness in your world that can never be diminished.

— Ralph Marston

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January 4

Insist on achievement

The easy things allow you to become bored, complacent, soft. The difficult things push you to be strong, interesting, passionate, accomplished.

Many of life’s necessities can now be obtained by simply tapping on a screen. That’s all wonderful, impressive, efficient, yet you desire and deserve much more challenge than that.

Insist on achievement from yourself today, not just activity. Seek out meaningful challenge, and let it pull great work out of you.

Creativity and ingenuity have eased many of the challenges of everyday life. That gives you the opportunity to tackle bigger, more difficult, fulfilling challenges.

You are here in this amazing moment to do more than just get through the day. Summon your strength, engage your creativity, and discover a new way to show life how great it can be.

Feel your desire to achieve as it wells up in you, fed by gratitude, wonder and love. Let it push you into action, doing the work to make life great in your own special way.

— Ralph Marston

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January 5

Life clutter

When your desk is cluttered your work suffers. When your mind, emotions, awareness are cluttered your experience of life is diminished.

Clutter is what you repeatedly deal with that wastes the time, effort, thought and resources you expend on it. What forms of clutter have settled into your life?

How much do you say, buy, read, store away, watch, select, handle, that has no meaning to you? What elements of your life are doing little more than adding to the clutter?

You can work to rid the clutter from your garage, pantry, computer desktop, closet, and see immediate benefits. You can also drop many other kinds of physical, informational, emotional, habitual clutter, and free up vast amounts of life space.

Dig the truly meaningful aspects of your life out from under the clutter. Stop hoarding all those tired old things that don’t matter, and let them fall cleanly away.

Devote your energy to all you love, not to the worthless stuff that just gets in the way. Rid your life of the clutter, and make room to richly live.

— Ralph Marston

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January 6

Beyond the doubt

Doubt is sometimes a sneaky way to be lazy. When you doubt your abilities you don’t have to go to the trouble to use them.

Go ahead, challenge yourself, your ideas, beliefs, perceptions, skills, with the intention of making improvements. Be careful, though, about doubting yourself too much.

Stay away from the kind of doubt that results in giving up. When you feel such doubt beginning to seep in, respond by renewing your commitment to persist.

Address your concerns, but don’t let them stop you. Consider your doubts, but don’t turn them into excuses.

Don’t let apathy and inactivity slip in through the back door in the form of doubt. As burdensome as the challenges and setbacks may be, you can always respond with positive action.

When doubt arises, see it within the larger context of all the great possibilities open to you. Then step beyond the doubt, into action.

— Ralph Marston

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January 7

Act your commitment

How do you extract rock-solid commitment from yourself? Start, and don’t stop.

Commitment is not built just with goals or affirmations. Commitment is constructed with action.

The more effort you put into the endeavor, the more commitment you have. To get real commitment, get going, and keep going.

Commitment is more than just making a promise. Commitment is honoring that promise by investing your time and effort.

What does real commitment feel like? It is the experience of watching yourself take action in the service of a meaningful purpose.

The power of commitment is yours when you take the first step forward, and the next, and the next. Act your commitment into being, feel the power, and reap the rewards.

-Ralph S. Marston

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January 8

Focus intently

Now is ripe with opportunity to make a difference. Seize that opportunity in its entirety.

Whatever is sure to come later can wait for later. Whatever might interrupt you can wait until it actually interrupts you.

Let go of all thoughts about what will eventually happen, about what could happen. Focus all your awareness on the work you’re now doing.

At some point your phone will ring. Yet there’s much good work you can get done before it does.

Experience how right, how powerful you feel when you focus intently. Make full use of it while you can, whether that’s another three minutes or four hours.

Don’t let yourself be distracted by the distractions that haven’t even arrived yet. When you have the opportunity, focus intently, and let your purposeful focus bring new value to life.

— Ralph Marston

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January 9

Wish and do

Wishing is informative, but not transformative. Wishing is an excellent starting point, yet it is not a viable strategy.

You must forge your wish into a commitment. Then express that commitment with your energy, effort, time, ingenuity and resources.

Take note of your wish, feel it, let it set your direction. Then get up, move in that direction with action, and persevere in your action.

Anything you can imagine, you can wish for. What you actually achieve is whatever you’re willing to work for.

When it means enough to you, a wish feels powerful, almost inevitable. That power you feel, though, is not the wish itself, but your own potential to achieve it.

You’ve had the wish, clarified your direction, and you can sense your great potential to make it happen. Now, fulfill that potential by doing the work to bring your wish to life.

— Ralph Marston

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January 10

Power of action

The task is what it is. Labeling it as difficult or undesirable only gets in the way of getting it done.

See it instead as empowering. See it as the opportunity it is, the opportunity to make a difference, to exercise your influence.

If you evade, procrastinate, or descend into self pity, you’re mainly hurting yourself. Yet you can choose a much more positive path.

You have what it takes to do what you must. Put the power of action on your side.

Confidence is there, waiting for you to claim it. Achievement is in sight, and you can act to make it yours.

Right now, you can set in motion the power of your action. Without hesitation, go ahead and get it done.

— Ralph Marston

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January 11

Feelings are yours to use

It’s not a gaping chasm or a concrete wall. It’s a feeling, and you’ll get beyond it.

More specifically, it’s your feeling. And you can choose what to do with it.

You can choose to hold it, treasure it, despise it, let it launch you into unstoppable energy or melt you into pure mush. And when you choose, you can let it go, move on.

The feeling is strong, yet you are stronger. The feeling may last for a minute or a month, while your purpose persists beyond every feeling.

There are feelings you once felt would never end, that you now cannot even remember. Feelings are awful, feelings are wonderful, feelings are yours to use, to embrace, to change.

Let the feelings fill you, teach you, move you, make you a thousand percent alive. But don’t let them stop you from being the best you can be.

— Ralph Marston

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January 12

Dissolve the tension

You can avoid much pain by simply allowing life to not be perfect. You can achieve great, beneficial outcomes when you begin by accepting the world as it is.

Expect to do your best, and expect the best of others. Expect also to be disappointed from time to time, and decide to never take it personally.

Remind yourself how foolish it would be to turn a small setback into a week-long binge of resentment and self-pity. Remind yourself to greatly benefit yourself by quickly, peacefully letting it go.

Tires will go flat, people will disrespect you, and the rules will be changed for no logical reason. Take a deep breath, smile, and know that all is well.

All is well because you, propelled by positive purpose, can adapt, adjust and thrive. Even when the world gets crazy, you can be smart, calm, confident, effective.

Dissolve the tension, melt away the stress. Life is not perfect, and you are doing just fine.

— Ralph Marston

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January 13

Let the beauty brightly shine

See that wherever life may find you today is a beautiful place to be. Realize that whatever you have to work with is everything you need to make new richness in this moment.

You can create value right now that will always be with you. You can experience joys today that can change your life forever.

You are surrounded by life’s richness. Possibilities stretch out in every direction.

Wherever you may choose to go, the first step is ready for you to take. The journey toward any destination you can imagine begins right here and now.

Recognize the beauty in every detail and appreciate the value in every challenge. Feel the purpose that springs from deep within you, and follow its lead as you move through each day.

Allow the sparkling new abundance that is born every moment to fill you with its warmth. Right here, right now, with life as it is, take it all in and let the beauty brightly shine from you.

— Ralph Marston

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January 14

Learn through challenge

You can do plenty, and yet you are not superhuman. Be realistic about what you can and cannot do.

It is by recognizing your limitations that you begin to transcend them. It is by admitting your weaknesses that you find ways to overcome them.

Being fully aware of your strengths is just as important. It enables you to engage those strengths, to build on them and add to them.

How do you know what you can and cannot do, what your strengths and weaknesses truly are? You learn all this and more by encountering challenge.

Challenge puts you to the test. Challenge shines a bright light on your advantages and shows you exactly where you can use improvement.

The more you challenge yourself, the more you know yourself. And that is an extremely valuable thing to know.

-Ralph S. Marston

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January 15

Positive expectations

Start the day expecting good things. Go through the day living up to your expectations.

Expect effective, sustained, purposeful effort from yourself. Expect kindness, patience, understanding, curiosity, energy and persistence.

Expect to run into challenges, and expect to successfully work through each one. Expect for circumstances to change, and expect to successfully adapt.

Don’t hide from life, don’t fear what the day will bring. Get a jump on the day by firmly setting your own positive expectations.

Expect to occasionally stumble, and expect to quickly get back up and get going again each time you do. Expect to run into a few disappointments, and expect to respond by becoming more determined than ever.

Expect opportunities, setbacks, joys, discomforts, distractions, inconveniences, delights and wonders. And expect to make the very best of everything you encounter.

— Ralph Marston