Daily Motivator - March
 

March 1

Big impact

Sure, you want to find ways to make a big difference. But in your zeal to do so, don’t overlook all the opportunities to make a small difference.

Incremental improvements are not dramatic or glamorous. Most people probably won’t even notice them at all.

Yet that doesn’t mean those small, incremental improvements are unimportant. Indeed, they are the way that almost all progress is made.

The most highly educated people do not gain all their knowledge in a single, spectacular event. That knowledge is built incrementally, one page of one book at a time, one lecture at a time, one experience at a time.

Successful enterprises do not spring into being fully formed. They are built, hour after hour, week after week, with plain old ordinary effort.

Are you looking to make a big difference, to have a big impact on life? Then seize every chance to make a small difference, for those differences are what will add up to the big impact you seek.

— Ralph Marston

March 2

Go with what unfolds

You cannot arrange a perfect experience in advance. What you can do is embrace whatever experience comes, and make the very best of it.

Take reasonable precautions, make detailed plans if you wish. But don’t avoid life’s genuine experiences just because you’re unable to perfect them in advance.

Much of the value of any experience is contained in what you didn’t expect. If you’re reluctant to be surprised, afraid to be challenged, you’ll miss out on that value.

Sure, you have your preferences and expectations. But don’t let your obsession with them limit the quality of your experience.

Go with what unfolds. Invest yourself in the unique beauty of each moment as it comes.

Treasure the unplanned, the unexpected, those surprises that paint the world in a shade you’ve never seen before. They are prominent among the experiences that add real richness to your life.

— Ralph Marston

March 3

You will solve this

You will solve this. You will get through this.

Take a breath, invite serenity into your being. Think clearly, act intentionally.

The moment feels lost, out of control. Yet the moment will pass and you will remain, willing, able, empowered, inspired to move forward.

You will zero in on what to do and you will carry that out. You always have and you always will.

You will find balance and the ability to maintain it. You will move closer to truth and your life will find new benefit in its positive and uplifting power.

You can deal with this, and do so with success. And once you do you’ll find yourself that much closer to the best of who you can be.

— Ralph Marston

March 4

Competence

Competence is what keeps you alive. Across all species, across all environments, across all time, life is defined and made possible by achievement, ability, competence.

If you have food on your plate it is because of competence. If you are sheltered from stormy weather you have competence to thank.

Love, compassion, and kindness are essential to a good and meaningful life, yet they are not sufficient. If you are to give your love, if you are to offer your care, you must be alive to do so, and that is possible only with competence.

Life has boundless possibilities but it also has very specific requirements. You can live extremely well within life’s harsh parameters, but only when lots of competent people are well rewarded for getting good things done.

Even the most highly competent people and institutions have their flaws. Yet as serious as those flaws may be, their existence is no reason to denigrate or discard competence itself.

Seek competence, celebrate competence, value competence, reward the competence of others. It makes possible your life, all that you love, and all the good things you can do.

— Ralph Marston

March 5

Lift up the lives around you

If you always dominate the conversation, you’ll be invited into fewer and fewer conversations. If you always cheat at the game, very soon no one will want to play with you.

It is in your own interest to restrain your own interest. Because your own well being is interwoven with the well being of others.

Your most rewarding goal is not to always win at any cost. Your most rewarding goal is to develop and maintain a world where as many people as possible can win.

That doesn’t mean denying or opposing your own self interest. It means understanding your self interest from a broad perspective.

Success is not an isolated phenomenon. Though success is built through individual effort, the greatest successes are those that encompass and benefit the most individuals.

Seek always to succeed in ways that inspire and enable many others to succeed. Lift up the lives around you, for that is the most dependable and fulfilling way to lift your own life as well.

— Ralph Marston

March 6

Better with every effort

In order to be smart you must ask stupid questions. In order to gain new skills and wisdom you must be willing to look like a fool.

No one rides a bicycle perfectly on the first attempt. The only way to become graceful at it is to start as an awkward beginner.

Is there something you’re reluctant to attempt because you’ll look bad at first? Well, you’ll look even worse if you’re always afraid to do it.

To get good at it you have to go through being bad at it. The way to do anything well is to give yourself permission to do it poorly for a while.

From the moment you were born you’ve been improving your skills and abilities. Give that positive trend new avenues where it can continue.

Admit you don’t know, accept that you can’t do it, and then challenge yourself to learn. Encourage and enable yourself to get better and better with every effort.

— Ralph Marston

Nothing beats a try but a failure.

March 7

Image of yourself

How do you imagine yourself to be? Imagination alone won’t make it happen, yet it does guide your expectations and actions.

See yourself as struggling, and you’ll continue to struggle. See yourself as achieving, and you’ll continue to achieve.

Decide to have respect for yourself, and you’ll find yourself doing what is respectable. Choose to feel confident, and your efforts all benefit from that confidence.

Talk positively to yourself, and discover how encouraging and empowering it can be. Step forward with faith in your abilities, and you’ll find yourself working to earn that faith.

Your image of yourself plays a major role in your goals, your plans, your levels of determination and success. Make that image the best you can imagine.

Think highly of yourself. With how you live, with how you act, continually give yourself plenty of good reasons to think that way.

— Ralph Marston

March 8

Pathway to improvement

You deserve better than what you’ve been giving yourself. You deserve to be more purposeful, more disciplined, more filled with joy and authentic richness.

Every minute of every day is a new opportunity to fully engage with the one-of-a-kind miracle that is your life. Take hold of those opportunities and live them for all they’re worth, for all you’re worth.

Feel each disappointment as it arises, and let it illuminate a pathway to improvement. Experience the satisfactions that come, allowing them to further enlighten and instruct you.

You deserve, and life itself deserves, the best you can be. Seek to improve upon last year, last week, five minutes ago.

Avoid wasting your energy on envy for what others have or resentment about what anyone else is doing. Concentrate on being more skillful, focused, and effective in advancing all you love and treasure.

In everything that happens is a pathway to improvement. See that path, keep yourself on it, and commit yourself to going where it leads.

— Ralph Marston

March 9

Accept this moment

Accept the moment that is, as it is. Settle into it, easing away from dissatisfaction with the past, away from concern about the future.

Accept the situation that is, as it is. Once you do, you give yourself the power to transcend it.

Acceptance is about right now, and doesn’t mean you’re forever fine with the way things are. It means you’re clear, realistic, able to focus, able to act in beneficial ways.

Let go of your racing thoughts about what could have been, what might or might not happen. Stop second guessing yourself and center your thoughts and actions around a positive intention.

What’s done is done, and now is the time to make good use of it. Whatever challenges may loom ahead, the best way to meet them is with clarity and meaningful purpose.

Keep all your energy pointed toward what you can do right now to support those things that truly matter. Accept this moment fully, and empower yourself to create maximum value with it.

— Ralph Marston

March 10

All that will happen

Think for a while about the days to come and remind yourself of this. You will have the chance to do your best, and you will be able to do well.

Life’s challenges will continue to test your strength. As a result your strength will grow and your skills will improve.

You cannot know all that will happen tomorrow, yet you can know this. Everything you experience has the potential to add richness to your life.

You’ll have opportunities to offer kindness, to practice patience, focus, and discipline. There will always be new mysteries to intrigue you, lessons to teach you, endeavors to enrich you.

There was a time when you never even knew about or cared about much of what you now value. Imagine how much more you will come to treasure and love as life continues to unfold.

In whatever may come there is goodness and value to be found. Step forward with confidence and create your own unique richness in each new moment that arrives.

— Ralph Marston

March 11

Profound responsibility

For your entire life you’ve been an observer. Again and again you have made note of which behaviors lead to desirable outcomes and which ones do not.

You’ve observed actions and their consequences in your own life and in the experiences of many others. You have watched, read, listened to, and passed along stories of success and failure from throughout history.

As skillful as you are at observing, you are much, much more. Because every day you put into practice the wisdom you’ve amassed from all the experiences you’ve ever known about.

Amazingly enough, every day you are in a position to learn from and improve upon everything that has ever happened. Not only is that an opportunity of unimaginable proportion, it is a serious, profound responsibility.

There’s a good chance your next action will result in success, if you act in accordance with all you know. You are indebted for that good fortune to everyone who has ever lived, and obligated to uphold their legacy.

Right now, doing exactly what you’re doing, you embody all of life’s priceless value, wisdom, and potential. Rise to the task of performing that role in the most beautiful and beneficial ways imaginable.

— Ralph Marston

March 12

Truth and falsehood

What is the difference between truth and falsehood? Truth can stand up to repeated, robust scrutiny, and falsehood cannot.

Truth is not a function of who it comes from. That is trust.

Certainly there are people you trust to speak the truth and people who can be depended on to lie. Yet truth itself is independent of how it gets to you.

Those who deal in truth are eager to be questioned and challenged about it. Those who deal in lies cannot tolerate any dissenting opinions.

At the most fundamental level, you depend on truth, from yourself, from others, to survive. Whenever you venture away from what is true, what is real, reality always wins.

Seek out and live by those truths, within you, outside you, that can stand up to challenge. With truth, every good thing is possible.

— Ralph Marston

March 13

Bring your courage forth

You must give up some degree of certainty in order to act. You must give up being where you are in order to move forward.

Every bit of progress you’ve made has been an expression of courage. Today you can extend that progress with more courage.

In places you least want to go, doing what you least want to do, you gain your most valuable rewards. You have the courage to do great things, if you will let yourself use it.

You have good reasons to fear the unknown. Yet you also possess the skills to perceive and adapt to all kinds of situations you cannot yet imagine.

Don’t be reckless, but do be courageous. You owe it to yourself, and to all of life, to transform potential into richness.

Today you’ll encounter opportunities to bring your courage forth. Notice those opportunities and choose to act on them.

— Ralph Marston

March 14

Positive force

You cannot always choose everything about your circumstances. Yet you can choose your state of mind no matter what the circumstances may be.

Can you focus your awareness on something positive, right now? Can you think of all the good things, and people, and experiences, and values, that you are thankful for?

You can’t control all the things that will happen to you today. Yet you can absolutely control the person you will be today.

Every factor on the outside, good or bad, can fill you with fresh determination to live with joy in the inside. Feel that determination, and let it push you positively forward.

The world and all its problems can bring you down if you let it. But you always have another choice.

Choose to be a positive force, for yourself, for those around you, for this time and place, for the world. It’s a choice you always have the good fortune to make, and one that will lift all of life higher.

— Ralph Marston

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

March 30

Do today

Do today’s work today. Pushing it into the future accomplishes nothing other than to increase its toil.

Address today’s problems today. They will only grow more complicated and intractable as time goes on.

Live today’s joys today. If you postpone them until later, they’ll go away and never come back.

Life is now. If you are to achieve, be happy, connect with others, and experience the wondrous richness that is yours to know, now is when to make it all happen.

Whatever dream you are following, or wish to follow, has its next essential step today. Now is when you do the amazing, fulfilling work to transform all you have experienced and accumulated into all you can be.

It is an opportunity that has no equal, that will never come again. Don’t let it pass you by.

— Ralph Marston

March 31

Wonder and richness

Listen, watch, and read more of what makes you think and less of what makes you angry or smug. Do less of what gives you regret and more of what offers you meaningful challenge.

You are more complex and able than you usually give yourself credit for being. Explore that complexity, engage that ability.

Stop paying so much attention to those who say only what you already knew they would say. Seek every day to discover some new bit of insight that resides outside your existing assumptions.

The reality where you’re immersed is rich and diverse in countless dimensions. Actively open yourself to its possibilities, and reach levels of value and fulfillment you cannot now imagine.

Go where you expect to encounter what you were not expecting. Pleasantly surprise yourself with how curious, flexible and adaptable you can be.

Life and all those who live it will never run out of new facets, qualities and nuances to amaze and enlighten you. Continue to let the wonder and richness freely flow.

— Ralph Marston