The Daily Motivator: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

Feel your way forward

Do the disappointments make you feel disappointed? There's no reason they must.

Do the frustrations and annoyances make you feel frustrated and annoyed? There's nothing that says they have to.

The fact is, you can feel precisely the way you choose to feel, whatever the situation may be. And you can use the power of your feelings to lead you into more positive, empowering territory.

When things are going great, you can choose to feel great. What's even better is that when things are not going so good, you can still choose to feel great.

Your feelings don't have to keep you imprisoned within the negative circumstances. Instead, choose positive, meaningful feelings that will free you from those difficult situations.

You can feel any way you wish, so choose to feel your way forward in the direction of your most treasured dreams. Right now, feel the way you most want to feel, and let those feelings set the direction for your life.

-- Ralph Marston

Copyright (c) 2009 Ralph S. Marston, Jr. From The Daily Motivator at http://greatday.com where you will find an archive of more than 3,000 positive messages plus books, CDs, motivational videos and more. Permission is given to post online only if this entire notice is included.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

New set of possibilities

Somewhere out past where you're now comfortable, there's a pleasant surprise. Beyond what you already know you can do, there are exciting and fulfilling and new things you'll be able to do.

There's a very short distance between what you think you can do and what you don't think you can do. That distance is the size of just one thought.

Once you decide that it is possible for you, it is possible for you. Once you have the thought that it can be done, it can be done.

The world you experience is contained within the world you expect to experience. Expect more, and suddenly a whole new set of possibilities will open up to you.

Ask yourself what you would like to be able to expect. Then go ahead and bring your expectations in line with your desires.

Each day is an opportunity to grow beyond yourself while at the same time more fully expressing your authentic self. Touch your highest vision, expect it to happen, and you'll surely see your way there.

-- Ralph Marston

Friday, November 27, 2009

To be effective

What is it that makes some people more effective than others? Is it skill, or luck, or secret knowledge?

More than anything else, it is a clear and consistent sense of purpose. When the objective is compelling enough, you will find a workable, effective way to make it happen.

To be effective, you must be effective toward some particular end. Clearly define, visualize and feel the reality of the goal, mentally weaving it into every part of your life.

Focus on why it must be done just as much as you focus on what is to be done. By very definition, an inspired performance requires inspiration.

Purpose provides that inspiration. Actions that clearly resonate with purpose will naturally gravitate toward higher and higher levels of effectiveness.

When it truly means something to you, you'll do it very well. What's even better is that in the achievement that surely comes, you'll find great fulfillment.

-- Ralph Marston

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Little slices

You don't have to solve all the world's problems before bedtime. Yet there is something you can do right now.

Do just a little, and it will make a difference. Then, do a little bit more.

Life can seem overwhelming, and yet in each moment it is easily manageable. Take one moment at a time, give love and effort and value to it, and then move confidently on to the next moment.

Live your life in wonderful little slices. Savor each one, discovering the unique opportunities for growth and fulfillment.

All the while, stay true to your authentic purpose. Do what you can and don't worry about the rest.

In each little slice of life, it's easy to be supremely successful at richly living. String those slices together, one by one, and the result is a beautiful life.

-- Ralph Marston

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Live your blessings

It is good to reflect upon thankful thoughts. It is even better to continually put thankfulness into action.

The way to be truly and fully thankful for what you have is to put it to use. Abundance grows more abundant when it is exercised.

Life's great and wonderful blessings are not for hoarding. They are for living.

What's important is not how much or how little you have. What's important is what you do with it.

You won't find richness in the objects of your desire. True richness comes in the living, dynamic expression and fulfillment of those desires.

Be genuinely thankful for your good fortune by applying that good fortune in an authentic, purposeful direction. Make good use of life's goodness, and there is no limit to how valuable it can grow.

-- Ralph Marston

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Positively frustrated

When you feel the need to feel frustration, go ahead and be fully frustrated. Then, be done with it and get on with making positive progress.

Though frustration can feel awful, it is not entirely a bad thing. Because frustration shines a light on your positive passions.

The only people who are never frustrated are people who never attempt anything. When you're committed to creating real value, there is going to be some frustration along the way.

So go ahead and feel that frustration when it comes. Allow it, accept it and welcome it.

When you do, something interesting happens. As soon as you stop fighting it, as soon as you understand what your frustration is telling you, it goes away.

Peacefully let your frustration run its course, and listen carefully as it does. What you're left with is a renewed sense of purpose and passion to move forward.

-- Ralph Marston

Monday, November 23, 2009

Bring excellence to life

You cannot achieve excellence just by proclaiming it to be. Excellence is built in the details.

Attend faithfully and competently to the details, while staying true to your purpose. That is how to bring excellence into your world.

What is done with genuine love is done with excellence. Let love guide you in each moment, and you will consistently create excellence.

Excellence resonates with what is true, what is good and authentically valuable, with what is right. Work with honesty, integrity, and a commitment to truth, and excellence will permeate the results.

Intention is critical, yet excellence does not come from good intentions alone. Excellence comes from actions persistently and consistently guided by the highest and most authentic intentions.

In each thing you do is the opportunity to create excellence. Again and again, bring excellence to life, and live true to your highest purpose.

-- Ralph Marston

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Take the cue

What you see, what you think, what you feel, has a reason. What you happen upon, seemingly by blind chance, has a reason.

In all that you experience is the voice of your most authentic self, carrying an important, appropriate and timely message. Listen, and seek to lovingly understand what the experience of each moment is saying.

All the wisdom you've collected is speaking to you. All the possibilities that spread out in front of you, are calling to you.

It is not by coincidence that you are where you are. A whole set of thoughts, intentions and experiences brought you here.

All that you have learned and all that you have been through culminate in this place now. It is a rich and entirely meaningful opportunity that greets you and calls you to move forward.

Take the cue, feel the message of this moment, and go with it. In this time and this place, this life is yours with which to do great things.

-- Ralph Marston

Friday, November 20, 2009

Energy drains

If you seem to lack the energy to move forward, ask yourself this question. What is draining you?

Are there negative habits or thought patterns that steal your energy away? Make the effort to identify them and make the commitment to change.

Are there people in your life who drain your energy with their negativity? Choose to get yourself more often around more positive, enthusiastic, empowered and empowering people.

Are you being constantly depleted by your focus on the world's difficulties? Challenge yourself to identify the positive possibilities that are present in every difficult situation, and remember that the future is what you make it.

Is too much of your energy being consumed by a particular shortcoming in your skills or abilities? Take the time to make improvements in those skills, and transform weakness into strength.

Whatever may be draining your energy, you can find it and successfully deal with it. Once you do, you'll find you have all that is necessary to accomplish whatever you choose.

-- Ralph Marston

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Treasure the experience

Let go of the need to constantly keep score. Create value for its own sake and it will come much more easily and naturally.

There are great possibilities patiently waiting to happen for you. Yet any desire for superiority you may have will keep pushing those possibilities away.

All you could ever hope for is already connected to you. But you cannot see that connection when you're constantly focused on getting more.

Your obsessive attachment to getting the result you seek prevents that result from being fully realized. Put your focus on being instead of getting.

Good things happen as soon as you get past the need for them. Let life flow as it will, and it will flow in great abundance.

Get out of the way of your own authentic fulfillment. Sincerely treasure the experience, and there will be much more to treasure.

-- Ralph Marston

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Always successful

In each and every moment, you are successful at doing something. You take action, and that action successfully brings a result.

Success is not really something you must strive to create, for you are always making it happen. What's important is defining and intending the success you do create so that it is a positive force in your world.

Many people are successful at just barely getting by. Others are successful at bringing pain and dismay into their lives.

Yet the very same skills that succeed at creating mediocrity and despair, can also be used to create rich fulfillment. What's needed is not so much a change in effort as a change in focus.

You truly deserve a great and wonderful life, and you have everything necessary to experience that life. Keep your thoughts focused on your most meaningful desires, and your actions will align with those thoughts.

You're always succeeding at something. Choose now to make it something great.

-- Ralph Marston

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Choose to see it

What does it take to transform impossible into possible? All it takes is a change in your thinking.

How do you grasp something that is out of reach? You expand your idea of how far you can reach.

Achievement is not easy, but then neither is poverty, or anything else for that matter. You already have everything it takes to achieve whatever you desire, when you simply choose to see it.

Every doubt you have is kept alive by your own thoughts. With a quick change in thinking, those doubts will vanish.

Within you are great possibilities. Allow yourself to fully feel them, focus your powerful passion on them, and live them.

Those positive possibilities can overpower any limitations. It will happen as soon as you let them.

-- Ralph Marston

Monday, November 16, 2009

Consistent effort

If you make more progress than you thought you would, don't compensate by slowing down. You're doing great, so raise your expectations even higher and keep going strong.

If you fail to make as much progress as you had planned, don't get discouraged. Remind yourself of why you're making the effort, and re-commit to getting it done.

Consistent, purposeful effort will reliably bring the results you seek. On some days you'll move faster than on other days, yet every day you'll keep going forward.

Never forget that there is great power in small actions that are repeated again and again. Though the path may be long and winding and uneven, by continuing to put one foot in front of the other, you'll reach your destination.

Celebrate the small victories and learn from the small defeats. Then, keep on moving steadily toward the goal you've chosen.

Put the power of consistent effort to work. And each day, you'll bring new value to life.

-- Ralph Marston

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Fresh new day

Today, life begins anew. Today, you are blessed with fresh, new opportunity.

You can build on the best of what has been. You can look clearly and objectively at the limitations that have held you back, and find new ways to transcend them.

Today, you can make amazing progress. Today, you can reach higher than you've ever reached before.

All your mistakes are behind you, and you've learned much from each one. All your experience is still with you, and you can use it in innovative new ways.

This day has begun, and with it comes your chance to make a difference. In these moments you can bring your dreams to life.

From deep within your purpose, look out and see all the great possibilities. This is a day that's now here for you to live more richly than ever.

-- Ralph Marston

Friday, November 13, 2009

Break the pattern

Fighting against a sense of despair will only make it worse. Instead of letting despair feed on itself, do something positive and proactive to break the pattern.

When you become angry about being angry, that will only make your anger more destructive. The more intensely you feel your frustration, the more frustrated you will become.

The way out is to quickly and decisively break the pattern. Realize that the negative momentum is building and do something so completely unrelated that you knock it off track.

Don't make your negativity stronger by fighting against it. Instead, make it irrelevant and powerless by turning your attention and putting your energy in a radically different direction.

Be outrageously and unreasonably positive. Be funny and creative and ridiculous and joyful all at the same time.

Smile, laugh and be enthusiastic about life even when you have no reason to be. By breaking the negative pattern, you'll create many great reasons to smile.

-- Ralph Marston

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Beauty itself

You are beauty itself. Spend your days revealing that beauty more fully in an infinitely expanding number of ways.

There is nothing to fear. For nothing can diminish the true beauty at the heart of you.

How is it that you're able to recognize beauty when you see it? Because that beauty resonates with the beauty that is you, and you know it, and you feel it.

Live from a perspective of beauty, for it is your most authentic nature. See each circumstance as an opportunity to express the unique beauty that is your life.

What could possibly be more beautiful than the ability to experience and comprehend beauty? That is who you are, and that is what you do.

Live the miracle that is the beauty that is you. Give your beauty to life, and it all grows more beautiful.

-- Ralph Marston

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Awaken your ability

There are capabilities you have that you don't yet know you have. Meaningful challenges will awaken those capabilities and get them working for you.

It is in the effort that you fully develop the ability to successfully make that effort. The way to know what you can do, is to do.

Go ahead. Get started, and as you go forward you'll get better.

As you go forward, your skills, your knowledge, and your effectiveness will grow continually stronger. In your commitment to take on the challenges, you'll find everything necessary to successfully meet those challenges.

Set your goals based not on what you know you can do. Set your goals based on what you're most passionate about.

Choose to do what you know, at your very core, you must do. The abilities you awaken will add value to every corner of your life.

-- Ralph Marston

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

How will it affect you?

How will this affect you, and how will that affect you? That is completely for you to decide.

What happens outside of you has an influence. Yet it is what happens within you that has the final say.

You can choose to be brought down by the worst aspects of the situation. Or you can choose to be lifted up by the best positive qualities of that very same situation.

What do you think about the possibilities of this day? How do you feel about the circumstances you're in?

What you think, the way you feel, the things you believe combine to create the filter through which you experience life. What passes through that filter is exactly what you allow to pass through.

You cannot change what already is, yet you can decide precisely what you will take from it and what you will do with it. No matter what happens, you have the power to make of it what you will.

-- Ralph Marston

Monday, November 9, 2009

Think your way forward

A problem is a problem for you when you think it is. An opportunity is an opportunity for you when you see it as such.

Are you going to let yourself be tossed around by events beyond your control? Or, will you choose to find and to fulfill the value that is imbedded in every situation?

Where you end up going is a direct result of where you think you will go. It's easy to think that there's no hope, and yet it is just as easy to see the positive possibilities.

What's the difference between letting your worst fears play out and allowing your most treasured dreams to be realized? At the most basic level, the difference is the way you choose to think of your life in each and every moment.

Every thought comes, without effort or hesitation, the moment you choose to think it into existence. The positive thoughts cost no more than the negative ones, yet they open the way for infinitely greater value in your life.

You can think that the world is against you, and you'll be right. Or, you can think your way positively forward, and live the magnificent reality of your highest vision.

-- Ralph Marston

Sunday, November 8, 2009

To get where you are

Consider how very far you've come. Think of all the value you've created and all the progress you've made.

Through the minutes and the hours, with all the days, months and years, there is so much you've already done. There can be no doubt that you've made it this far.

Now, you have the opportunity to keep going. Now, you can build upon the positive momentum that you've worked so hard to establish.

You are well experienced at getting things done. Imagine what you can now do with that valuable experience.

Though the challenges may be great, you've proved that you have the strength and ability to move successfully through them all. And as you have already experienced, there are great rewards on the other side of those challenges.

You've done much to get where you are. Now those same skills of achievement will take you wherever you wish to go.

-- Ralph Marston

Friday, November 6, 2009

Empowering focus

From the same exact situation, two different people can achieve two remarkably different results. Why is that?

Because the results you achieve are not determined by the situation itself. The results you achieve are determined by what you choose to focus on.

If you focus on all the things that could go wrong, your mind will find a way to make those things really happen. But that's not what you want, is it?

Instead, give yourself an empowering focus. Lock your focus solidly on the positive possibilities.

Think in great detail about the good and valuable and desirable outcomes. Without question or hesitation, your mind will begin finding realistic, workable ways to make those good things happen.

Carefully and intentionally guide your focus to the best place you can imagine. And your focus will, in turn, take you there.

-- Ralph Marston

Skip the need

Whatever you need, you do not have. Take your focus off needing, and start doing, start creating, start being what you seek.

Don't waste your time and energy languishing in a state of need. The moment you have the thought to add something to your life or your world, get busy making it happen.

Skip the need and go straight to the achievement. Dive into the effort, and keep making the effort until your objective is reached.

Instead of constantly thinking that you need something, experience yourself achieving it. Instead of dwelling in excuses and lamentations, celebrate positive and valuable results.

There is nothing that you need to need. That's because you are fully capable of setting goals and of finding effective ways to reach them.

So get busy, get going and express life's grand abundance in your own very special way.

-- Ralph Marston

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Committed to make it work

Do you hesitate to take action because you're not sure if you'll be effective? Remember that achievement is built on efforts that work as well as efforts that don't work.

Some of your individual efforts may not bring the desired results. Yet when you are committed to keep doing whatever is necessary, you are sure to find a way.

The important thing is to focus on the goal, and put your energy into doing your best to reach that goal. Accept that you may not get the result you desire, then step forward anyway, and do everything within your power to achieve that result.

At the very least, you'll gain valuable experience. And with enough experience, you'll eventually be able to get it right.

It's true that there are no guarantees. After all, if it were a sure thing, someone else, far less capable than you, would have already claimed the prize.

Go ahead and make the effort. It will work when you're committed to make it work.

-- Ralph Marston

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Momentum of effort

When are you most likely to make the effort to get things done? It's when you're already taking action.

If you get the day started by doing a lot of nothing, the whole day is likely to go that way. Yet when you begin the day with a positive action, even if it's just a little one, you set the powerful momentum of effort in motion.

Once you're moving and working and creating and achieving, you'll tend to keep it up. That's why it is so important to get started early in the day.

What happens when you've just experienced how good it feels to get something done? You become eager to do more, so you can create that great feeling again.

There is some little something you can do right now that will give you a taste of accomplishment. Do it, feel the good feeling, and notice how motivated you become to do even more.

There's always a quick way to create the momentum of effort in your life. Get yourself going with positive action, and put that momentum of effort and achievement to work for you.

-- Ralph Marston

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Pain and pleasure

You always have the ability to change your life for the better. To take the specific actions that will bring about that change, you must find the motivation within yourself to do so.

To create your own powerful, personal motivation, set yourself up to do two things that come naturally. Move away from pain and move toward pleasure.

If something is painful, you will be highly inclined to move away from it. So remind yourself at the deepest level about the painful consequences of not taking action, of not making the changes you know you must make.

When something is pleasurable, you will naturally and without hesitation move toward it. Arrange to make the changes so completely and meaningfully pleasurable that you cannot help but take the actions necessary to bring them about.

When you give yourself a compelling reason to change, you will most certainly find the way to make those changes. When you clearly know why, within the depth of your being, you will figure out how, and you'll enthusiastically do whatever must be done.

Yes, you can indeed make a positive change in your life right now. Move away from the pain of inaction and toward the pleasure of whatever you sincerely seek.

-- Ralph Marston

Monday, November 2, 2009

Start here

You cannot move forward from some idealized point in the future that has not yet arrived. If you are to move forward, you must do it from where you are now.

Start from where you are. Though it may not be perfect, it is plenty to get you going.

Make full use of what you already have. Wishing for more, or feeling resentment because you don't have more, will only waste your precious time.

There's no guarantee that your actions will be effective. Yet you are certain to not be effective if you take no action at all.

Open yourself to the fullness of your possibilities. Step positively forward using what you have, from where you are right now.

Gently and thankfully accept where you are. And tap into the unique richness that has always been yours.

-- Ralph Marston

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