Mikes Blog

Invest in healing 
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Casting yourself as a victim is a waste of your time and energy. Whether a minor inconvenience appears or a major difficulty arises, you have a much more powerful option. 

Even when you truly are a victim, seeing yourself as such, treating yourself as such, will not improve your situation. What will improve the situation is to take full responsibility for doing something about it. 

Make it your job to actually make things better. The smallest positive action is infinitely more effective than any amount of self-pity. 

Acknowledge the tragedy, the unfairness, the carelessness, the injustice, but don’t make it worse by wallowing in it. No matter who or what is to blame for what happened, you can choose to be responsible for moving positively forward from it. 

You cannot always avoid being hurt. But you never have to continue investing yourself in that hurt. 

— Ralph Marston

Better and better 
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Each new day is an opportunity to up your game. Each new situation puts you in position to be more thorough and effective at whatever you’re doing. 

If you’re not constantly making improvements, you’ll quickly fall behind. It is not a curse, not a burden, but rather a chance for you to become a better and better version of yourself. 

Incremental improvement makes the passing of time into your friend. And there’s always a way to make some kind of incremental improvement. 

Walk a little more briskly, listen a little more attentively. Be a little more patient and forgiving, focus a little more intently, care a little more deeply than before. 

In every area of your life are constant opportunities for improvement. Little by little, without being overwhelmed, you can gently and enthusiastically make those improvements. 

Don’t leave yourself struggling to catch up. Instead, make the choice in every moment to get a little bit further ahead. 

— Ralph Marston

This Too Shall Pass

This, too, will pass 
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One setback is not the end of the world. Even a series of disappointments is not the end of the world. 

Because life by its very nature is dynamic, and things change. The worse the situation becomes, the more desire and incentive everyone has to make it better. 

That series of disappointments, as ominous and pervasive as it may be, will not extend in a straight line to infinity. At some point there will be pushback, there will be improvement, there will be a turnaround. 

Certainly it is useful to anticipate difficulties so you can head them off early. But it’s also important to remind yourself that this, too, will pass. 

Don’t give up on everything just because of a little problem, or a big problem, or a whole string of problems. Instead, keep moving forward as best you can. 

This, too, will pass. And when it does, you can be thankful you continued to invest yourself in a positive future. 

— Ralph Marston

Achievement happens
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Every great thing that’s ever been done has been achieved by people who were less than perfect. Everyone has flaws of some sort, and yet people continue to make good things happen all the time in countless ways. 

All the value that’s ever been created has come about in circumstances that were far from ideal. With limited time, with inadequate resources, in the face of complex challenges, achievement happens nonetheless. 

Achievement happens when someone decides to make it happen regardless of what the situation may be. Achievement happens when someone stops criticizing the opportunities and starts acting on them. 

The path to failure is broad and easy while the path to achievement is narrow and much more difficult to follow. Yet achievement happens all the time because people just like you choose to make it happen. 

What would you attempt to achieve if your skills were perfect, if conditions were ideal, if resources were plentiful? Whatever it is, if you wait for all those things to line up perfectly, the opportunity will fade away. 

Achievement happens not because of what you start with, but because of what you’re willing to put into it. Be willing to do what you must with what you have, in the face of imperfection, and achievement will happen for you. 

— Ralph Marston