March 15

Stop and start

Stop merely thinking about what you should do and what you need to do. Start doing it.

Stop wondering if your idea will work. Act on it and find out.

Stop complaining about what’s wrong. Get to work improving the situation.

Stop arguing about who cares the most. Put your caring into action.

Stop being regretful or disappointed in yourself because you’ve waited too long. Start making good, effective use of the time you now have.

You’re in charge of your next move so make it the best one. Stop wasting your opportunities and start transforming them into real, lasting value.

— Ralph Marston

March 16

Open to change

To triumph over challenge you must be willing to change. The bigger the challenge, the more profoundly you must transform your actions, your attitude, your habits, your thinking.

Life exists in a state of change. That’s how you know something is a living being, by observing that it changes.

To get what you desire, what you seek, what you need, you must give. That giving involves making changes in the world around you and changes in yourself.

Ask yourself this and be honest in your answer. What elements among your thoughts, perceptions, assumptions, and activities no longer provide positive value?

What things could you replace them with that would be of greater service to you and your world? Often, one small but committed change can ignite your enthusiasm for making even more changes.

Open yourself to change and you’ll connect yourself to a much greater set of positive possibilities. Embrace change, again and again, and you enable yourself to do great things.

— Ralph Marston

March 17

What you want

Right now you’re on your way to somewhere. Are you clear about where and what it is?

A vague idea about your intended destination is a starting point, but not enough. Unless you are precise about where you wish to go, there’s no telling where you’ll end up.

It’s not easy to reject whole swaths of possibilities and to narrow your focus on just a few. Yet to achieve you must achieve specific things.

You can have, or experience, or be anything, but you can’t be everything or have everything. And you wouldn’t want it anyway.

That’s because much of the value and meaning of anything is in what you must forgo in order to have it. To have everything would be no different, or worse actually, than having nothing.

So choose, mindfully, authentically, where you wish to go, what you wish to do, what you want your life to become. You’ll enable yourself to find enormous fulfillment in making it happen.

— Ralph Marston

March 18

Empower you

Think about this question, and notice how it instantly makes you feel good about yourself. What new positive action could you commit yourself to taking every day without fail?

The mere consideration of that question touches something powerful and positive within you. It reminds you about all the good things of which you are capable.

Now, take it a step further. Provide yourself with a real, meaningful answer to that question.

Next, imagine yourself making the commitment to do whatever you have chosen, and following through on it, day after day. Envision a new level of discipline and purpose being added to your life.

Again, notice how good it feels just going through the mental exercise. Then, motivated and empowered by that positive feeling within, make that commitment to yourself and take the necessary actions in its service.

Transform that good feeling into actual progress. Prove to yourself what you can do, experience it, and it will empower you to move forward even more.

— Ralph Marston

March 19

Small positive step

Your direction and momentum are at least as consequential as your location. That’s why taking a small positive step can make such a big positive difference.

There’s some little something you can do today that will improve your life tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, not only will you experience the reward for your initiative, you’ll be inspired to add to it.

As soon as you stack one improvement on top of another you have momentum. That momentum can change your whole frame of reference for the better, giving it power to perpetuate itself.

Suddenly, the old doubts and excuses lose their negative influence. You become oriented toward action and improvement rather than procrastination and mediocrity.

When you experience yourself moving forward you’re able to notice a radically expanded set of possibilities. Action, momentum, and enthusiasm begin to feed off each other.

It all begins with a small positive step. Are you willing to take that step right now?

— Ralph Marston

March 20

All the work necessary

Pay attention to today’s new possibilities. But don’t be so consumed with them that you abandon the work you’re doing to fulfill yesterday’s possibilities.

Start new things. And finish what you start.

Once you’ve embraced a possibility, see it all the way through. Do all the work necessary to transform it from possible value into existing value.

It feels great to get excited about new possibilities. Yet to fully justify that excitement, you must go beyond it.

You must do the difficult and not so glamorous work of bringing what’s possible into reality. Otherwise there’s no reason to get excited about the possibility in the first place.

Choose those possibilities to which you can give your full commitment. Then maintain that commitment until each exciting possibility has been forged into magnificent reality.

— Ralph Marston

March 21

Today has arrived

There’s something you can do to make today a little better than yesterday. There will be something you can do tomorrow to make it a little better than today.

Your actions make a difference, so use those actions to make that difference a positive one. Your thoughts and your attitude make a big difference, so choose them wisely, intentionally.

All sorts of factors outside your influence determine what this day delivers to you. Yet you determine what to do with it all.

From whatever the raw materials may be, decide to create richness, joy, positive experience. Do all those things that you do best, and make this day a day you’ll be thankful to have experienced.

Embrace the possibilities that will enable you to transcend limitations. Discover new and creative ways to add rich substance to life.

Today has arrived, and the way it unfolds for you depends mostly on what you choose to make of it. Go ahead and make of it the best you can imagine.

— Ralph Marston

March 22

Always achieving

It’s good to have done, but not enough. Do more, add to it, continue the momentum.

Don’t let a single success be the end of success. Let it set the stage for even more.

Find inspiration in where you’ve been, in what you’ve accomplished. Then act on that inspiration.

Extend the fulfillment to a new day, a new setting, a new realm. Achievement is a skill that’s too valuable to go to waste.

Put that skill and all your experience to work right now. Fall in love again with the possibilities, and give your energy to what you love.

Let life find you at your best, in your highest state of fulfillment. Let life find you always achieving.

— Ralph Marston

March 23

Choose one

How do you avoid being incapacitated by an overwhelming number of choices? Choose one, and stick with it.

A limitless number of things are possible, but your time and resources are limited. Choose one, and don’t look back.

Give your skills, your passion, your experience a clear objective upon which to focus their power. Get something good and useful done instead of fretting and wondering about what to do.

Giving your commitment to a specific possibility means rejecting all the others. But if you fail to commit to any possibility, that’s a rejection of them all.

A single fulfilled possibility is worth more than an infinite number of unfulfilled possibilities. Zero in on the specific value you wish to create, and actually create it.

What you do with whatever you choose is at least as important as which choice you select. Now choose one, and make the very most of it.

— Ralph Marston

March 24

Let life mean something

Let life mean something. Let each hour, each task, each experience add to the meaningful substance of your life.

Let the little things have meaning, beauty, a positive impact on your soul. Let life unfold as it will, and reveal new possibilities for goodness.

In everything you do is the potential for value, for wonder, for contemplation, sharing, and joy. Rather than seeking to judge whether or not something is worthwhile, choose to make it worthwhile.

Be patient and eager all at once. Balance your wariness about what could be harmful with your enthusiasm for what can be good and useful.

Permeate life with meaning by the way you live it. Conditions will ebb and flow, yet your commitment to a life of significance can continue to grow.

See the great meaning that is possible right now, where you are, with whatever you have. Continue to let that meaning come to life.

— Ralph Marston

March 25

Accepting difficulties

By avoiding difficulties you prolong them and expand them into greater difficulties. It is by accepting difficulties that you are able to transcend them.

What difficult task are you hiding from, or putting off, or pretending is not necessary? What difficult conversation are you steering clear of, afraid to initiate?

Those difficulties have the power to change your life for the better, if you will deal with them. Or they will eventually and surely overwhelm you when you continue to run away from them.

Much of what makes any difficulty so difficult is your reluctance to confront it. Do you understand how much power that fact gives you?

What is easy is never very worthwhile, and what is difficult always results in some kind of real value. Anyone who promises something for nothing is not only lying but is disrespecting you in the worst possible way.

Do the difficult work, face up to the difficult interactions, and emerge with new value, new goodness. Your life, your potential, and your world are all worthy and deserving of the best you can give.

— Ralph Marston

March 26

Something in return

Avoiding action, avoiding commitment, does not enable you to avoid suffering. It just makes the suffering meaningless, and thus far worse.

This day will cost you twenty four hours of your precious life. Make sure you get something of real value in exchange.

You have great potential, to the point that it could be considered magical. Yet for that magic to arise, it must be applied toward a specific and meaningful purpose.

If your potential is hidden away and never used it is quite literally of no use. Any option, skill, or ability that’s not ever exercised might as well not exist.

Moving forward with meaningful purpose does not put you or your potential at any greater risk of loss or hardship. It empowers you to create value and fulfillment out of the risk that is already built into life.

One way or another you’re going to pay the price for each moment, for every year. Live your life so as to experience true meaning and fulfillment in return.

— Ralph Marston

March 27

Be crazy enough

Be crazy enough to live with joy. Be foolish enough to care.

Be curious enough to make mistakes. Be humble enough to learn.

Be grateful enough to appreciate it all. Be passionate enough to promote and expand the best that can be.

Be brave enough to say what’s true. Be strong enough to really be you.

Be serious enough to pull your weight. Be cheerful enough to laugh all along the way.

Be honest enough that you’re constantly trusted. Be hopeful enough to keep going and going, no matter what may appear on your path.

— Ralph Marston

March 27

Enough to inspire you

Of course it’s inspiring when everything works the way it is supposed to, and fits perfectly into place. Yet you can also be inspired by mistakes, failures, and ineffectiveness.

Ideal outcomes inspire you to reach even higher and do even better. Undesired outcomes inspire you to make necessary adjustments, to grow stronger and more resilient.

Life rewards you and challenges you at the same time, offering new possibilities of every flavor. And with each turn of events you’ll discover more ways to be inspired.

Do you seek inspiration to live at your most purposeful, effective level? All you have to do is look at what’s going on around you.

Look with love, with care, with understanding, curiosity and deep gratitude. Whatever is going on, life always has more than enough to inspire you.

What will inspire you today? Just take a look and see.

— Ralph Marston

March 29

Pay attention

Pay attention, and attention pays you back in great abundance. Be willing to see clearly what is going on around you, and act on what you see.

Even the most obvious truths can be easy to ignore when they first become evident. But ignoring the truth does not make it go away.

When you sense an opportunity, pay attention. When you feel something isn’t right, do the work to pay close attention.

What starts as a frivolous trend can soon become an unstoppable force. What first appears as a minor annoyance can morph into an overwhelming burden.

Pay attention, and notice new developments while you still have the power to create maximum benefit with them, or subdue them, or at least get out of their way. Pay attention today, or tomorrow you will desperately wish you had.

Blissful ignorance can feel good for a moment, but it’s a tragically insufficient long-term strategy. Pay attention, and gain the wherewithal to thrive as present realities give birth to their consequences in the future.

— Ralph Marston