Daily Motivator - November

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November 1

Let life catch up

Let life catch up to you. Don’t get so ensnared in chasing what seems important that you forget what’s truly important.

Enjoy not just the times when you’ve racked up an impressive achievement. Enjoy every moment along the way.

Allow the way things are right now, to be enough for right now. There is much you can do to make life better, yet already there is much in life that is good.

Balance your ambition for what can be with your gratitude and appreciation for what is. After all, if you can never be satisfied with what you have, there’s no gain in getting more.

Perhaps the longing you feel is not really a longing to acquire more. Perhaps it is a longing to more fully appreciate all that is already yours.

By all means, move forward, work, achieve, make a difference, create value. As you do, give life, and purpose, satisfaction, and fulfillment, the chance to keep pace.

— Ralph Marston

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November 2

Making good use

Achievement is not that far away. And you can act right now to make it even closer.

Your destination is within reach. You can take another step toward it any time you choose.

This moment is an opportunity to make progress. Though your actions may not be perfect, you can go forward with them.

You can give your best effort right now, and then persist in that effort. You can get one part of the work done, and then move forward with another part.

Success in any endeavor is not a mystery. It’s mostly a matter of making good use of the time available to you.

Today you have time available to you. You know what to do.

— Ralph Marston

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November 3

Informed by clarity

Even if it’s not such a good place to be, still it is good to know where you stand. Clarity has great value.

When you’re clear about where you are, you can develop and activate a strategy to get where you wish to be. With a detailed view of the situation, you can make specific improvements to that situation.

That’s a whole lot better than denying the situation exists. And it’s a whole lot better than having your view of reality obscured or misrepresented.

Before you solidify your opinion, seek as much clarity as you can get. Before you commit to a plan of action, know clearly what you’re getting into.

Your mind can visualize anything, extrapolating small anecdotes into large trends, and that can often be helpful. Yet it can also lead you to see what was never really there and never will be.

Clarity gets you back into alignment with reality. When your powerful imagination and passion are well-informed by clarity, there are plenty of great things you can do.

— Ralph Marston

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November 4

Kindness, pure and sincere

If kindness is to exist, someone has to be the first to offer it. Today, you can be that someone.

If you cannot give kindness, nothing else you have matters. And no matter what else you do or do not have, you always can offer kindness.

Kindness connects, kindness heals, kindness encourages and energizes. Upon all those in its vicinity, kindness confers the joy of being alive.

Kindness affects lives in more ways than you could ever know about. Kindness creates benefits you would never want to be without.

Kindness may not always be your first impulse. Yet it often contributes mightily to your most powerful response.

We are better off together than we are apart. At the heart of how that happens is kindness, pure and sincere.

— Ralph Marston

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November 5

Another opportunity

It’s not the end of the world. It’s not the beginning of a glorious new utopia.

It’s another day that you can use to make a difference. It’s another opportunity for you to live your life with richness, love, and meaning.

The winds of opinion shift from one direction to another and back again, repeatedly. Take your bearings, take the situation of the moment into account, and move forward.

What you can do now is what you can always do. Give your sincere best to every endeavor.

Sometimes the challenges are more, sometimes a little less. Sometimes the crowd is with you, other times you must move in spite of the crowd to get where you choose to go.

No matter how you feel about yesterday, today there is much to be thankful for, and plenty of work to do. Consider all that’s available to you, and resolve once again to put it to good use.

— Ralph Marston

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November 6

Find positive energy

Explore the far reaches of your awareness. Dive into the depths of your existence.

Somewhere in all that is positive energy. Expect to find it and you will.

It won’t be in the first place you look, maybe not even in the fourth or fifth. Yet it is there, and if you persist a little longer, you’ll come across it.

Move your focus quickly away from what drains you, and move on to something else. Somewhere in there, out there, over there, around that particular corner, you’ll find what animates you.

In what you remember, in what you anticipate, in what you love and value, is a treasure trove of positive energy. In old hopes, in new discoveries, something waits to resonate with your highest concept of yourself.

Keep going until you’ve uncovered it, and take your fill. Then share that unique and beautiful positive energy with all of life.

— Ralph Marston

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November 7

Think and feel

I feel I have a good answer, and you think you have a better answer. Even though we disagree, both of us are right.

Life is about what you feel. It’s also about what you think.

Your feelings give richness and color and meaning to your thoughts. Your thoughts impose a measure of discipline and reality on your feelings.

A thinking approach often seems at extreme odds with a feeling approach. Yet both approaches seek to make the best of the same situation, so they’re not really so opposed.

Has the conflict between thoughts and feelings pushed you into a disagreement? See if you can adjust your own balance of thoughts and feelings to achieve a better understanding.

Intellect and emotion do not have to exist in opposition. Take a step back, work to get them into harmony, and make the best of the whole person you are.

— Ralph Marston

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November 8

Care deeply

Can you care deeply? Can you, at the same time, not care at all?

Care deeply about your purpose, your efforts, your values. Care not at all about what’s beyond your ability to influence.

Care deeply about the moment, its beauty, its possibilities, its challenges, about doing what’s right. Care not at all about what others think of what you’re doing.

Feel the power of stillness within you. Engage that power to make yourself a positive presence in life.

Always, life swirls around you. Give love, attention, effort and care to life, without getting too distracted by all the swirling.

Care deeply about what matters, about what you can do. Let all the rest take care of itself.

— Ralph Marston

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November 9

Be joyful

Allow yourself to be joyful. It is as simple as that.

Strive and calculate, bend and then stand firm, execute your plans, hold fast to your intentions. And no matter what the outcome, let joy be a part of it.

The world often does not work the way you thought it would. Life surprises you in many directions, and would have scant appeal otherwise.

It is never as good as you wished, never as bad as you feared. And always there is room for as much joy as you care to give.

So give more, and then some. Depend not on things going a certain way, but upon you choosing to be a certain way.

Respect your deepest obligation and celebrate your highest privilege. Be joyful.

— Ralph Marston

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November 10

Good new days

You cannot go back to a better time. Yet you can always go forward to a better time.

When you do, you carry with you a powerful perspective. It’s a perspective expertly informed by what worked out well in the past and what didn’t.

Time moves only in one direction. If you seek to move against it you become bitter, irrelevant, and ineffective.

Choose instead to embrace each moment as it arrives. Fill it with new instances of what you know to be good, worthwhile, true and beneficial.

Don’t waste your energy wishing for another yesterday. Take yesterday’s goodness and re-imagine it for tomorrow.

The good old days are gone, yet they’ve left you with an abundance of great experience. Now put that experience to use and get to work creating some good new days.

— Ralph Marston

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November 11

Intentional attention

Pay attention, but choose where and in what way you pay that attention. Don’t allow your attention to be stolen from you.

Know your purpose, know your values. Know your truth and your intentions.

The most insidious threats to your well being are not physical. They are mental, psychological, emotional, and they are very real, highly destructive.

Your attention is worth more to you than any amount of money. When you spend it, be sure to get something equally valuable in return.

Pay attention in ways that support and promote and nourish what’s most important to you. Fulfill the maximum potential of your attention by taking complete responsibility for it.

Pay your precious attention in ways that make you a more positive, creative, generous, fulfilled person. Pay attention with firmness and excellence in your intention, and make yourself a great life out of it.

— Ralph Marston

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November 12

The good you can bring

Can you see how miserable you make yourself when you’re unable to have some particular thing you don’t even need in the first place? Turn your attention instead to the good things you do have.

Let go of the silly fantasy that some magic bullet is going to make everything better all at once. Instead, immerse yourself in the true magic of using your wits and your efforts to make one thing better at a time.

Allow life to play out in its most meaningful and satisfying pattern. Recognize that the ups and the downs are inseparable parts of a whole.

It is a whole of experience that brings deep meaning and fulfillment to the core of your being. It is a true story of beauty and strength that runs through everything you encounter and all you do.

By choosing to tolerate the difficulties you develop the fortitude to master them. You learn to point every moment, every event in a positive direction.

What makes life special is the good you can bring to it. Embrace life always as it is, and bring it on.

— Ralph Marston

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November 13

Ego talking

When you observe yourself choosing your words and arranging your actions so as to impress someone, that’s ego talking. And ego is not always your best advisor.

When you are obsessed with the thought you’re being misunderstood or misrepresented, that’s ego talking. Perhaps what you notice is true, still ego is right there, in position to drive your response.

Ego has its place. Yet all too often it jumps far out of that place, and can come to dominate the situation.

Ego distorts your view, telling you you’re too good to have to do all the menial, inconvenient things that must be done. Ego blames your troubles on everyone else, and thus prevents you from addressing them.

Imagine the power of simply telling yourself, whenever you notice it, that ego is what’s motivating you. Imagine putting yourself in position to choose whether or not you continue to let ego be in control.

For much of what you do and say and think and feel, that’s ego talking. Take note, and make sure it’s not the only thing you listen to.

— Ralph Marston

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November 14

Disagreement

Disagreement is not what keeps people apart. What keeps people apart is the refusal to acknowledge, explore and resolve their disagreements.

Indeed, in every disagreement is the potential for agreement and cooperation. The pathway to that cooperation is respectful engagement.

The fact that you disagree on a particular issue means that at some level an agreement already exists. Because you and the other side already agree that the issue is important.

Acknowledge that starting point and work your way forward. Agree that you disagree about something meaningful, and begin to discover other ways in which you can agree.

Disagreement is possible only when there is somehow, somewhere, some common ground. Persist in identifying and respecting that common ground, and then persist in building upon it.

When you are sincerely passionate about your position, make positive use of that passion. Do the difficult work to find and to implement new ways to agree and cooperate.

— Ralph Marston

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November 15

Ask why

The world seems very complex, but you have no idea. No one can fully grasp the immense complexity of existence.

We know life is complex, yet it is far more complex than we are able to imagine. Every tiny decision causes a cascade of results that interact with results from every other decision.

Behind what is obvious, are layers upon layers of factors that are not so obvious. Supporting every reason is another deeper reason, and another, and another.

In such a complex realm, you can always gain benefit by seeking to answer a simple question. That question is, why?

Work to know why, and you will discover hidden, valuable possibilities. Ask why, and you will uncover powerful connections.

Life is endlessly complex, and in that complexity you can find great richness. With curiosity, with determination, with purpose, with gratitude, ask why.

— Ralph Marston