Mikes Blog

Get positive
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A positive attitude catapults you into your most effective state. Even if there is no other reason to be positive, that’s more than enough reason.

Plenty of things happen that can understandably put you in a negative mood. Your most powerful strategy is to get yourself out of that bad mood.

Whatever may have put you in a bad mood, certainly don’t invest yourself in supporting and excusing and justifying it. Instead, put your energy into changing your perspective to a positive one.

You know from experience there are certain specific things you can think, do, and say that will quickly and genuinely improve the way you feel. You can’t immediately change the circumstances, or whatever just happened, yet you absolutely can change yourself and your response.

Acknowledge that you have every right to feel negative, and then make the powerful choice to be positive instead. There’s never been a case where your negativity improved a situation, so do what it takes to get positive.

When life has been disappointing, frustrating, painful and unfair, respond in a way that will bring out your best. Get positive, and get yourself quickly to a better place.

— Ralph Marston

Difficult things happen
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Every problem is a chance for you to become a better version of yourself. Every challenge charts a path for growth and improvement.

Every setback carries the potential for powerful motivation. Every disappointment can lift you to a higher level of resolve.

Every inconvenience has the power to inspire new resourcefulness. Every frustration gives you a way to strengthen your patience.

From each positive experience, you learn a few things. From each negative experience, you learn much more.

Of course you would not intentionally seek to be hurt or disappointed. But neither would you want a life where hurt and disappointment never happen.

Difficult things can happen, do happen, and amazingly, life finds a way to make them beneficial. Difficult things can happen, and that’s what makes the good things so very good.

— Ralph Marston

Give goodness
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Give goodness, not in the abstract, but in real places, with real people. Give goodness, not as a vague idea, but to a specific moment.

There’s quite a lot you can do to lift up life, here and now, as you are. And nothing is as satisfying as doing so.

Rather than accumulating more reasons to boast about yourself, give goodness. If you want people to care about what you achieve, pursue achievements that improve their world.

Give goodness because you can. Give goodness because it makes a difference that reverberates through lives, through time.

In ways large, small, and in between, give goodness. In ways that inspire you to give even more, give goodness.

Put your love for life into loving action. Give goodness.

— Ralph Marston

Relaxed attention
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If you wish to copy a drawing by hand, you’ll improve the accuracy of your copy by first turning the original upside down. Try it, and discover how it focuses your attention on the actual lines and curves, and prevents you from being overly judgmental about how well you’re doing.

Plenty of other things in your life can benefit from more relaxed attention and less opinionated judgment. You can free up much time and mental energy by letting go of the need to have so many opinions.

Sure, to function in life you need to have a well-developed perspective. But that doesn’t require you to carry around a truckload of opinions on every little issue.

Is it really necessary to conduct an extensive internal dialogue about every person you encounter? Perhaps you’d be better served, and much better liked, by attentively listening to what that person is saying.

Give your opinionating a rest, and give life the opportunity to unfold in front of you. Stop over-analyzing everything you come across, and give yourself the chance to simply enjoy it.

Improve the accuracy of what you observe. Actually look at, listen to, and experience what you experience rather than placing so many judgments on it all.

— Ralph Marston