Daily Motivator - April

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April 16

Give yourself a goal

Get the best from yourself by giving yourself a goal. Base your decisions in each moment on your commitment to that goal.

Each thought, each action, either moves you toward your desired outcome or away from it. Choose accordingly, guided toward the destination you have decided to reach.

Expand on those thoughts and continue those actions that lead you where you wish to go. Let other thoughts and actions quickly fall away from you.

Life is teeming with influences that can distract and disrupt you, wasting your time and sapping your energy. You cannot avoid all those influences, yet you can solidly immunize yourself against them.

Give yourself a meaningful goal, and give yourself a strategy for staying focused. Decide once, stick with that decision, and at every turn you’ll be clear on what you must do.

Give yourself a goal, and when you reach it, give yourself another. Spend each day aimed in a specific direction, and discover how much great value you can bring to life.

— Ralph Marston

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April 17

Pleasant thought

You don’t have to let your thoughts continue to resist your life and your efforts. Whenever you choose, you can think a pleasant thought.

Think a pleasant thought, and push your awareness in a positive direction. Think a pleasant thought, and raise your energy to a higher level.

There are all too many incidents that can trigger a cascade of distressing feelings. They can trap you in a vicious negative thought pattern and immobilize your efforts.

When you realize that’s happening, break the pattern with a pleasant thought. Think of a good memory, a dear friend, a favorite place, or a satisfying activity.

A pleasant thought is not naive, wishful thinking. It is a strategy that enables you to regain control and to boost your effectiveness.

When life knocks you down is precisely the time you can benefit most from a positive perspective. Think a pleasant thought, and get yourself back to being your best.

— Ralph Marston

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April 18

Envision the goodness

You are here, now, ready to live this fresh new moment. And that’s a great thing.

Whether you’re immersed in pleasure or being obstructed by challenge, you have value and richness to be lived. Move forward with thankfulness for your opportunity to do so.

Let go of any judgment or resentment or conceit surrounding how you got here. Open yourself to the best possibilities for making good use of what you now have.

Consider the new richness that can result from your actions. Envision the goodness you can give to this day, to this place, and put your best efforts into the service of that vision.

Forgive yourself and others quickly if you find you’ve gone astray. Then get right back to making the most of where you are.

Whatever this day looks like, however this moment has unfolded, it is an irreplaceable opportunity. Live it, with your best attitude, with your highest expectations, for all the beauty and progress it can bring.

— Ralph Marston

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April 19

Harvest the gains

Appreciate where you’ve been, enjoy where you are, and nourish enthusiasm for where you’re going. Fill your awareness with gratitude for the ever-changing experience that is your life.

Cherish the good times you’ve known, keeping them with you always. Be mindful and thankful for the strength and wisdom you’ve gained in all the other times.

Toss the gloominess and trivialities out of your thinking. You have so many beneficial, positive, meaningful matters to attend to.

You have time, you have love, you have ability, curiosity, versatility. Blend those all together with the possibilities of this day, and feel the passion as you push forward with positive purpose.

Shine the bright light of your awareness on the good fortune of being you, capable, unique, and motivated. Focus it all on making a difference in ways that matter most to you.

Life has much to gain from you today, and you have much to gain from life. Do the work, live the moments, to harvest those gains.

— Ralph Marston

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April 20

Best among the worst

There is a fork in the road, and both paths forward are treacherous, challenging, undesirable. Keep going, because you can, because you must.

Sometimes all the options available to you are painful, challenging options. Even so, you can choose the best among the worst, and push through with it.

Avoiding the difficult choices is not really possible. Because the more you avoid them, the more difficult and overpowering they become.

You must come to terms with each difficulty, acknowledge its existence, identify its nature in detail. Then you can engage your strength, your character, your values, your faith, in successfully dealing with it.

Instead of trying to run from difficulty or pretending it does not exist, make use of it. Do the work to transform your present difficulties into valuable past experiences and future strengths.

When all the choices are hard choices, choose the one with the best potential outcome. Accept that life can be difficult, and get on with making it the best it can be.

— Ralph Marston

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April 21

Capability for achievement

Every past experience has given you something of value. Every new experience will do the same.

The triumphs, setbacks, delays, surprises, frustrations have built your character. Now the building continues.

Instead of wishing your situation were different, find what it has to offer you. See what new strength, wisdom, skill, insight you can gain from going through it.

Circumstances that block your progress force you to develop new, more effective strategies for making progress. Experiences that push you back give rise to fresh determination within you to push forward.

Not only is there a way to get beyond each obstacle. In finding that way, in working through it, you add to your capability for achievement.

Whatever the circumstance, whatever the experience, involve yourself in it fully, with the highest of expectations. You have great progress to make, and right where you are is where you can make it.

— Ralph Marston

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April 22

Negative exaggeration

Sometimes you can feel like everything is going wrong, but of course that is not literally true. Many things may be seriously out of order, but certainly not everything.

So start with that realization, that some aspects of your life, of the world, are still okay. Challenge your negative exaggeration, and replace it with a more thoughtful, considered view.

Provide yourself with a concrete example that contradicts your exaggeration. Remind yourself of what still works, of what continues to be dependable, reasonable, of what can bring a smile to your face.

You can be realistic and acknowledge a difficult situation without descending into hopelessness. And then you can take action -- positive action, hopeful action, effective action.

Negative thoughts often become exaggerated in order to command your full attention. Once they have your attention, they’ve done their job, and your best option is to quickly replace them.

Assure yourself that all is not lost, and prod yourself to craft a positive way forward. Make good use of whatever still works well, to repair and transcend all that has gone wrong.

— Ralph Marston

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April 23

Time to grow

If you’re satisfied with your life, it’s time to grow. If you’re dissatisfied with your life, it’s time to grow.

There is within you a unique concept of wholeness and fulfillment that has not been fully realized. Whatever successes you’ve had, whatever challenges you face, it’s time to grow.

Step a small distance away, and observe yourself as another person would see you. Is every action you see, fully in line with the person you desire, deep inside, to be?

Most likely, there’s a lot of room to grow, and that’s a very good thing. Because now, today, it’s time to grow.

Everything you do, every situation you encounter, every relationship, every experience, can contribute to that growth. As a priceless bonus to all you do, you can make life ever more meaningful.

Seize the opportunity that’s always available, that’s always enriching. Remember when making each choice, it’s time to grow.

— Ralph Marston

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April 24

Limitations and possibilities

The laws of physics prevent you from jumping off the ground and flying through the air. Yet those same laws of physics, when properly applied, enable you to fly through the air in an aircraft.

The facts of your situation may impose some very severe limitations on you. At the same time, within that set of facts, you can find liberating and empowering forces.

You cannot magically alter reality just by the way you think. However, you can bend reality in your favor through your beliefs, your perceptions, your expectations and actions.

If all you see are limitations, that’s because all you’re looking for are limitations. Open yourself to more positive possibilities, believe they are there, and they will emerge into view for you.

The ocean is deep, wide, dangerous, and its waves push against you when you try to walk out in it. Yet when you train and equip yourself to traverse the ocean’s surface, you can go all the way around the world.

Hidden within the biggest limitations are the best possibilities. Dare to contemplate what seems impossible, and you’ll find a viable way forward.

— Ralph Marston

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April 25

Step back from the frenzy

Much of what feels so urgent right now, you won’t even remember tomorrow. Step back from the frenzy, and enjoy some perspective.

The news headlines screech and scream, but there’s nothing new about them. The real news is that life carries on, its wonder and beauty endlessly unfolding.

Take a moment, take a breath, and experience the miracle of existence, of awareness. Think of all the good choices you have, and how many more there must be that you’ve never even thought to consider.

Most of what demands your attention, doesn’t deserve it. Ease away from all that, and see the deep beauty in what you’ve lately forgotten to notice.

You put great effort into being able to live a good life. Remind yourself to fill its moments with substance, with meaning, with what’s real, with what matters to you.

Feel good about this moment simply because it is, because you are here to live it. And you’ll find plenty of worthwhile, fulfilling things to do with it.

— Ralph Marston

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April 26

Do what you can do now

You can’t get it all done right away. Yet you can get some of it done right now.

You can’t immediately get the whole way there. But you certainly can take the first step.

The entire process of achievement is difficult and complicated. Fortunately, you can break it down into as many small pieces as necessary.

Every book that’s ever been published was written one word at a time. If you can write one word, and if you commit yourself to keep going, you can write a book.

If you can lay one brick, you can build a tower. If you can walk one foot, you can walk a thousand miles.

All that’s necessary for now, is to do what you can do now. Keep it up, and get yourself precisely where you choose to go.

— Ralph Marston

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April 27

Until

Do it until it works. Make changes, improvements, adjustments, until you get it right.

Keep asking until you get an answer. Keep searching until you find the path forward.

Study the material until you fully understand it. Practice the skill until you master it.

The first attempt is rarely the attempt that gets the job done. Continue making more attempts until your attempts result in success.

That success will come from committing yourself to keep going until you’ve achieved whatever you have chosen to achieve. Don’t give up after the first setback, or the fifth, or fifteenth.

Feel the dream, and see the vision. Then do what you must do until you can make the vision real.

— Ralph Marston

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April 28

Respond with determination

When life slams you down, respond with determination rather than dejection. Respond with self-empowerment rather than self-pity.

Self-pity wastes your effort and time. Being outraged that the world has hurt you, or someone else, won’t ease the hurt in the least.

Transform that outrage, that pity, into positive action. There is something you can do in response that will improve the situation, and the sooner you do it, the better.

Injustice is awful. Yet being paralyzed by your own outrage just makes the injustice that much worse.

Summon the strength, do the work, to come up with a better response. Challenge yourself to create a positive way forward that will change conditions for the better.

Difficulties will make you stronger, give you great opportunity, if you let them. Point your energy in a positive direction, and actively do what’s best for the life you love.

— Ralph Marston

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April 29

Attitude of discipline

Enforcing discipline in one part of your life encourages discipline in all parts of your life. Abandoning discipline in just one little area will degrade your discipline in every area.

Discipline is made up of actions, yet discipline also is an attitude, a way of approaching life. That’s why even the smallest increase or decrease in discipline can lead to sizable results.

It’s tempting to let the little things slide, just this once. Yet inevitably that leads you to compromise the bigger things, and not just this once but every time.

By the same measure, it’s easy to add a small, new disciplined behavior to your life. When you do, you’ll experience the increased benefits of discipline being carried into other parts of your life.

Discipline enables you to take control of your affairs, to have more positive influence in your world. The more you experience discipline, the more you’re inspired to practice it.

What small, disciplined regimen can you bestow upon yourself right now? Embrace new opportunities to discipline yourself, and your results will increasingly reflect your desires.

— Ralph Marston

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April 30

Give yourself more options

Rather than complaining about the situation, work to give yourself more options. Rather than worrying about your vulnerability, or about the unreliability of others, give yourself more options.

When you have more options, you have more confidence, more control over your own affairs. Options give you the ability to walk away from a negotiation, and that enables you to negotiate from a position of power.

Options give you independence, the power of choice. Options provide you with multiple ways to respond to difficulty, multiple strategies for seizing opportunity.

Discovering and developing new options, takes work. That work is effort well spent because it earns you increased leverage over your circumstances.

Take inventory and ask yourself, what options do you now have? Then consider, what new options could you develop?

When you only have one possible path forward, that could be a big problem. Avoid that problem and enhance your effectiveness by working to create more options for yourself.

— Ralph Marston