Mikes Blog

Working within constraints
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The airline limits the weight of your bag to 50 pounds. They’re doing you a favor.

They’re forcing you to prioritize, to be thoughtful and intentional about what to take with you and what to leave behind. By working within such constraints you become more purposeful, more innovative, more focused on what’s truly meaningful.

The reality is, you don’t have infinite space or time or resources with which to do whatever you seek to do. By embracing that reality, by figuring out how to live within the limits, you can live with amazing richness.

Your nature is to be creative and resourceful as well as purposeful. You’ve been operating within reality’s constraints your whole life and you’ve become skilled at doing so.

And though you’d often prefer to be free of limits, those limits provide a clearly defined realm in which to operate with success and fulfillment. Without limits life would have no structure to provide support or impose valuable discipline.

What would it look like if, instead of cursing the limitations you were to be thankful for them? It would look like a life of strength, of purpose, of discipline and achievement.

— Ralph Marston

Make more goodness happen
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The potential for goodness lives within you here, now, always. Each person you come in contact with provides you opportunity to offer kindness, a positive presence, genuine connection.

Every choice you make is a chance to leave the situation better than you found it. Every thought, every word enables you to focus on what matters, on what can be beneficial and life-affirming.

All around are opportunities for you to work toward fulfilling, valuable outcomes. In every direction you look, beauty and possibility are there to be seen, lived, and expanded upon.

Do some corners of the world seem dark and hopeless? Find comfort, inspiration, and energy in knowing that your own actions can make things less forbidding and more hopeful.

Goodness is always possible. What goodness requires, and always has, is active participation.

Right now is another opportunity to make more goodness happen. Imagine what you can do, then go beyond merely imagining and give life the benefit of your own unique goodness, again and again.

— Ralph Marston

What matters and why?
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Spend a moment thinking about this question. What matters to you right now, and why?

You have skills, resources, knowledge, experience, and people with whom you’re directly and indirectly connected. You have time to make use of all those advantages in the service of what matters most.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to get caught up in urgent but mostly meaningless endeavors. Or you can become infatuated by fashionable, alluring pursuits in the moment that have no value beyond the moment.

Five years from today, or twenty, you could be looking back at a lot of wasted opportunities. Or you could be celebrating a span of time in which you added great richness to your life and your world.

One major factor in deciding which outcome you reach will be how much you focus on meaningful purpose. That’s a difficult thing to do, and it’s also a highly valuable thing to do.

Every day is an opportunity to be intentional, to be purposeful. So get in the habit of asking yourself, of reminding yourself, what matters, and why.

— Ralph Marston

Treasure the process
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The way to get there is to keep going. The way to keep going is to treasure the process.

Even before you have reached the goal, you continue to have the experience of reaching toward the goal. That reaching is what creates the value you seek.

The work to get there can be tedious, annoying, and frustrating if you choose to see it as such. Yet there’s a much more empowering choice you can make.

You can decide to see the work in a positive light. After all, your perspective, your opinion of what you’re doing, is up to you.

You can remind yourself that in each little task is the opportunity to add value to the final achievement. That every moment you put into the effort is a moment spent on a worthwhile endeavor.

There’s a specific process that leads to whatever achievement you may desire. Treasure the process, and reach the achievement.

— Ralph Marston