Daily Motivator - December
 

December 1

Difficult questions

Difficult questions give rise to useful answers. Challenging problems compel valuable solutions.

What difficult questions have you been unwilling to ask? What challenging problems have you been avoiding?

In doing so, how much of life’s richness are you denying to yourself and to others? What joys, what achievements, what connections, what beautiful vistas are you failing to experience?

Maybe this week you could work up the nerve to dive into a problem that’s been vexing your life. Perhaps you could dare to ask one of those difficult questions and then work on an honest and useful answer.

Take the time, make the effort, and discover it’s not as bad as you feared it would be. Indeed, you’re likely to find it’s much more valuable than you hoped it would be.

Let go of your fear surrounding what’s difficult, challenging, inconvenient, uncomfortable. Open yourself to powerful possibilities that can raise your life to a whole new level.

— Ralph Marston

December 2

How can this be good?

How can this be good? How can it be helpful, to you, to others?

What can you learn from this? In what ways can you become stronger because of it?

Categorizing anything as all good or all bad is almost always an oversimplification. Ask yourself instead what would or what does make it good?

What can you do that will make it more positive than negative? What is the potential value in this, and how can you bring it to life?

Every reality is what it is. Yet what you do with reality and what comes about as a result of that, is largely up to you.

How can this be good? And what are you doing to make it so?

— Ralph Marston

December 3

Within arm’s reach

The world is not obligated to be the way you think it should be. Your responsibility is to live in the world as it is.

Concern yourself with the progress you can actually make. Focus on those problems you can actually solve.

Don’t become so outraged or despondent about society’s ills that you fail to adequately address your own shortcomings and opportunities. It is by improving yourself that you improve your world.

Right now within arm’s reach you have good and valuable work to do. Get that done before you even think about sailing off to right the wrongs on some foreign shore.

Experience life’s potential for goodness by personally embodying it. Always remember that the most powerful way to promote your highest ideals is by living them.

You always have much good work to do within arm’s reach. Operate on a human scale and enable your life to be of great benefit to all of human experience.

— Ralph Marston

Happy new month Tammy and Kracker. Thanking God for watching over us during the month of November, thank you Father for bringing us to this new month of December one day at a time.

December 4

It’s an opportunity

The obstacle you encounter is not just something that gets in your way. It’s an opportunity.

The beauty you see is not merely there to be admired. It represents an opportunity.

This is not just another hour, another trip, another situation. It’s an opportunity to live with purpose, with effectiveness, with joy, gratitude, and love.

Whatever form it takes, see the opportunity. Take the opportunity to act, to speak, to learn, to improve, to understand.

Appreciate the opportunities and they return the favor. The more opportunities you make good use of, the more and better opportunities there will be.

Whatever place you go, whatever thing you see, whatever is going on, it’s an opportunity. Make it your business to make good and lasting value from it.

— Ralph Marston

December 5

You have what it takes

You can find wisdom in every corner of life. Open yourself to it.

You will gain knowledge and strength from every experience. That goes double, triple, ten times for the difficult ones.

Get out there, get going, live and learn. Dig out new ways to transform that learning into richness, into beauty, into fulfillment.

Stop wishing in vain that you could rearrange the past or be magically inserted into a different present. Reach within yourself and figure out what you can do with whatever you have, with whatever the situation may be.

It will absolutely require some difficult choices, and you’re absolutely capable of making those choices. Go ahead, for your own sake, for your family’s sake, for the world’s sake, move forward with those choices.

Decide right now to be a fully active participant in the future. You have what it takes, so put it all to good use.

— Ralph Marston

December 6

Multiply the goodness

Are your skills being regularly tightened and lubricated by challenge and purpose? Or are they falling prey to rust and decay through neglect and complacence?

Are your resources being renewed and increased in relevance because they’re being put to good use? Or are they sitting in some forgotten warehouse gathering dust and obsolescence?

What about your relationships, your knowledge, the places you love, the experiences you treasure? Have you grown complacent about them or are you constantly finding new ways to breathe more life into them?

The good things in your life lose their value when you hoard them, neglect them, or hide them away. To maintain and increase their value, share them and make beneficial use of them.

Open up the full value of all you have by infusing it with the power of purpose, effort and attention. Multiply the goodness in your life by doing good things with it every day.

Give full respect and appreciation to all you are, all you have, and all you can be. Make use of it all, and make it all even better.

— Ralph Marston

December 7

What are your choices?

Your choice can make any situation miserable. Your choice can make any day enjoyable.

You may have more potential than any other person who has ever lived. Yet it is only your choice that enables that potential to be realized.

Your life is subject to countless forces, to the designs of strangers, to random twists of fate. Your choice determines what you make of it all.

Others are likely to define you by your heritage, your job title, your appearance, even by the sound of your name. Much more than these things, though, you are defined by your choices.

Your great fortune is that you are in control of those choices. You can keep them, you can change them, you can abandon them in whatever way you see as best.

Through all your choices you live a life that is uniquely you. Ask yourself often, what are your choices and where are they taking you?

— Ralph Marston

December 8

This time

You’ve been here before. It’s time to stop doing this to yourself.

You know what got you here. You know how much work you’ll have to do to get back on course.

This time you’ll have to do that work again. As you do, consider all the good possibilities you must give up or delay while you correct the situation you’ve gotten yourself into.

You will make things better because you must. Then you’ll have the opportunity and sufficient determination to never make the same unforced error again.

Take that opportunity. Nurture that desperate sense of determination into lasting inspiration, into a permanent improvement in the way you handle your life.

You know where you went wrong and you know you’re never going to let it happen again. That’s a very good thing and it is yours to earn this time, right now.

— Ralph Marston

December 9

Full commitment

What you do is what you’re committed to doing. Actions are driven by thoughts, and your level of commitment determines which actions your thoughts select.

Your commitments are not necessarily what you say they are, to yourself or others. Your commitments are evidenced by the results you get, by the way your life unfolds.

You determine the nature and amount of thought, effort, purpose, and passion you put into each moment. Commitment bundles all those moments together in a coherent and meaningful direction.

As such, commitment gives great power to your actions, knowledge, resources, and skills. Upon what goals, what dreams, what roles, what responsibilities, will you expend that power?

Look around your life at this time. It’s easy to see what you’ve been committed to, and what you haven’t.

What will you be fully committed to now, going forward? In the answer to that question is a significant part of the span of life that now stretches in front of you.

— Ralph Marston

Hey Kracker, where have you been?
Even though we never met we share this daily reading together. So I just want you to know I miss
You. God bless you and have a great day.

December 10

Wonderful time and place

It’s good to focus most of your attention on where you are. And where you are is in this moment, doing whatever you’re doing.

Sure, you can take the past and the future into consideration. Just be sure not to cheat yourself out of living the present moment you’re in.

There’s great value in this moment because you can actually make a difference in how it unfolds. You can take action and create results.

See the colors, feel the textures, listen to the music of life as it plays around you. Realize what a privilege it is to have this moment, this very moment you are in.

Here now is your power, you’re awareness. Here now are all kinds of possibilities and the opportunity to access them, to make something of them.

Live the beauty and potential of this moment, now while you have it. Discover on countless levels what a wonderful time and place it is to be.

— Ralph Marston

December 11

Speak the truth

When you are at a loss for what to say, speak the truth. Truth is always your most powerful choice.

There is no way you can hide behind a lie for very long. Although the truth can be extremely difficult at times, it ages very well.

You don’t necessarily have to be rude or confrontational to speak the truth. You are fully capable of speaking the truth with respect, consideration, and understanding.

In fact, speaking the truth is one of the most respectful things you can do. People appreciate it, people remember it, and people remember you in a good light because of it.

The way to successfully deal with reality is truth. Anything else is at best a delusion that will eventually set you back.

Don’t let yourself be tempted to sidestep the truth. Speak the truth, and speak in everyone’s best interest.

— Ralph Marston

December 12

Powerful space

You live always in a powerful space. It is the space between what happens and what you do about it.

It is the space between how you feel and the way you act. In that space, your choice makes all the difference in the world.

You have no real power over what others think or say or feel or do. You have full power over what their words and actions and ideas mean to you.

If you depend on some particular outcome for your happiness and satisfaction, you’re sure to be disappointed. Yet in the space where your choice resides, the highest level of fulfillment is always available to you.

Whatever happens is merely whatever happens. What you make of it within yourself is what makes all the difference.

Activate and utilize that power, every time. Your choice is everything, so choose well.

— Ralph Marston

December 13

What’s easy

It’s easy to demonize those who disagree with you. It’s better to work at finding common ground so you can cooperate and create real value.

It’s easy to blame your troubles on someone else or something outside your control. It’s better to envision a way forward and to put your vision into action.

It’s easy to construct fantasies about the world that assuage your feelings. It’s better to deal with the facts as they are, no matter how challenging that may be.

It’s easy to come up with lots of excuses for delaying or avoiding what must be done, and to hope against hope that things will improve anyway. It’s better to give time, attention, and focused, effective effort to your hopes and to bring about improvements in your world.

Life is difficult, and the way to make it even more so is by seeking to deny or avoid the difficulties. Life is difficult, yet by meeting its demands with positive purpose and diligence, you can fill life with meaning, joy, and goodness.

What’s easy is not what makes life good. You deserve, and your world deserves, for you to do what makes life good.

— Ralph Marston