Mikes Blog

Prepared to be patient
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As soon as your day begins, be prepared to be patient. Be prepared to be tolerant, understanding, and forgiving.

Know from the start that someone in your life will do something foolish, selfish, hurtful. For no one you encounter even comes close to being perfect.

But that’s okay, because you can prepare yourself to handle it. You can remind yourself that someone else’s foolishness is not, after all, about you.

You can be so ready in advance for the offenses of others that they don’t offend you at all. You can enable and empower yourself to quickly let them go, and to move positively forward.

There’s no need for the negative behavior of others to waste your energy or drain your spirit. Simply know that it will happen, and when it does, continue with your own highest intentions.

Be ready to encounter the negativity of others. You’ll immunize yourself, and won’t have to make that negativity your own.

— Ralph Marston

Active achievement
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Stop telling yourself what you should do, what you need to do, what you want to do. Take in a deep breath of energy and determination, and do it.

Wishing is easy, but it leaves you empty. Doing is much more difficult, yet it is far more satisfying.

Imagine how you’ll feel to have it all done. Picture yourself looking back on your accomplishment and feeling great about it.

Put an end to your disappointment with yourself. Enter the bright new territory where you’re immensely pleased with what you’re achieving.

Your mind is good at coming up with empty, unfulfilled wishes, yet it’s also good at something much more powerful. It’s good at prompting you to take action.

So put your mind, your body, and everything else into a state of active achievement. And feel how great you will feel to get it done.

— Ralph Marston

The moment is new
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Events didn’t work out the way you planned. What if that turns out to be a good thing?

You didn’t get what you wanted. Perhaps that is making room in your world for something even better.

There are a whole lot of great things in life that you don’t even know about yet. Just because one or two matters didn’t work out to your satisfaction, isn’t the end of the world.

Consign your disappointment to yesterday. Today, and tomorrow, and every day from now on, you have the chance to move far beyond it.

Life is filled with beautiful people, places, experiences, and countless other treasures. Don’t deny all that richness to yourself for any reason.

Get up, go forward, get out and live, learn, love, discover, and live some more. The moment is new and your life is ready for the best you can put into it.

— Ralph Marston

Make meaning
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What comes free and easy to you, has little or no meaning to you. Those things that have meaning to you are the things to which you give something of yourself.

To experience satisfying, profound meaning in life, you must put forth energy and effort to make that meaning. You must invest time, thought, your attention and resources to forge that meaning.

As such, every difficulty you encounter serves as an opportunity to make your life more meaningful. Every challenge through which you must navigate is a chance to add meaning and substance.

Take care not to become mesmerized and enslaved by the easy things. They can rob you of the chance to create deep and fulfilling meaning.

Instead, seek those people, ideas, and pursuits that bring out the best in you. Engage in activities that challenge you to learn, to grow, to continually improve.

Most things that are free and easy are worth what they cost you, which is nothing. Choose instead to invest yourself, to bear the cost of those things that matter, to fill your life with more and more great meaning.

— Ralph Marston