October 27

Appreciating the limitations

When the possibilities are unlimited, when you can do anything, too often you do nothing. You become so overwhelmed with all the choices that it seems impossible to choose.

When some particular option is free and easy to access, it’s also easy to take for granted, no matter how valuable it may be. You can easily do it anytime, which means you can always do it later, and so you never end up doing it.

Limitations are difficult to live with, yet they do serve a positive purpose. They provide structure, and can force you to focus on what’s valuable, meaningful, and achievable.

If you have a one-week vacation planned, you’re likely to maximize the experience of every day. Contrast that to having six months off from work, when there’s a good chance you’ll be aimless and unfocused on many of those days.

Diamonds are expensive because they’re extremely difficult to find and to extract. In the same way, the options that are more difficult to exercise are the ones most likely to bring great value.

Rather than wishing for a life without limitations, find value in the structure and focus that limitations provide. By understanding and appreciating what you can’t do, you gain more meaningful rewards from what you can do.

— Ralph Marston

October 28

Affirm the moment

Now is when you experience life. So experience it now with all you have, in depth, in every dimension.

No moment is really ordinary. Because every moment is a unique experience in a unique environment with unique thoughts, feelings, people, and circumstances.

Treasure the opportunity to see, to know, to taste, to feel, to connect, to act. Realize how much you can do with now, and move forward to fulfill its possibilities.

Right now you can care, you can love, you can remember, you can dream and plan and share. It’s a rare and valuable chance you have, ready for you to accept and put to use.

Say what you must say, feel what you can feel, do what is good and right to do. Affirm the moment and all it encompasses, because what it encompasses is the beauty of life.

Rise to the enormity and possibility of all that’s in front of you right now. Affirm this moment, and live it well.

— Ralph Marston

October 29

This imperfect moment

The day didn’t work out the way you hoped. Perhaps you can enjoy it anyway.

It’s good to make plans and see those plans through to fruition. Even so, you’re free to create new goodness from whatever happens, even if it’s unplanned and unexpected.

No matter how you got here, this moment is yours to live at the highest level of fulfillment. Regardless of what you have or don’t have, you have the opportunity to make the best of today.

Allow thankfulness for that opportunity to fill your heart. Then look around, notice the good you can do, the richness you can experience, and do so.

See the great potential in this imperfect moment. Step away from your judgments and delight in the experience.

Things are not like you expected. Now is your chance to make them even better.

— Ralph Marston

October 30

Beautiful experience

Let the experience be as beautiful as it is. Then let it go.

Don't ruin it by clinging to it, or trying to make it more than it is. Treasure forever its good feeling in your heart by letting it be.

As beautiful as it is, you cannot ever make it happen again in exactly the same way. But then you don't need to, because it's always yours, as close as your next thankful thought.

What you can do is open yourself to new experience, to what can possibly be even more beautiful. That takes faith, courage, and much work, yet it is in giving yourself fully to the ongoing moments that new beauty arises.

Time passes, conditions change, people come and go. Nonetheless, the investments you make with your heart will always retain their value.

Have the confidence to accept that each beautiful experience has been enough. And you're sure to have many more.

Ralph Marston

October 31

Good advice

Many times you tell yourself what you must do, and then leave it at that. But what if you were to actually follow through on your own good advice?

There are reasons why you’re telling yourself these things. You’re well positioned to know what’s best for you and what isn’t.

So don’t be satisfied with just knowing what must be done. Give yourself the benefit of actually doing it.

Sure, it’s easier to merely scold yourself and make promises to yourself. Yet you have what it takes to make good on those promises.

You deserve the full benefit of your own perceptions. You deserve to act on those perceptions.

What have you been telling yourself you ought to do? Today is your opportunity to make it happen.

— Ralph Marston