Mikes Blog

Here and now
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Here and now you can forgive, laugh, appreciate, enjoy. Life’s goodness is really not so distant or difficult.

From pain to healing, it’s not that far. From conflict to cooperation, you can jump in an instant.

Stop caring so much about proving you were right. What makes life worth living is who you can be, the love you can give.

Here and now is one little slice of time for you to fill with simple goodness. Offer a small kindness, a bit of understanding, a little effort that adds to life’s beauty.

Encourage and you’ll find encouragement. Act in the direction of your highest hopes and bring them steadily into reality.

There’s always space for improvement, and your beneficial actions can fill that space. Here and now, add to the value and meaning of life.

— Ralph Marston

No matter what
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You start with the best of intentions. Then all too often, life gets in the way.

Intention occurs in the idealized and protected space of your mind. Action, on the other hand, must take place in the messy, complicated, and difficult realm of reality.

As such, transforming intention into action takes effort, flexibility, persistence, and more. Intention is necessary for action, but not sufficient.

From the moment you put forth your best intentions, be realistic about what is required to bring them about. Be prepared to invest yourself in the real-world manifestation of those intentions.

When you find that you’ve failed to act on your intentions, don’t just chalk it up to life getting in the way. Instead, become curious, take responsibility, understand why you failed to act and what you can do differently to create a more active, positive result.

Formulate intentions to which you can fully commit yourself, knowing you’re certain to face challenges. Then you’ll be ready to act on those good intentions, no matter what.

— Ralph Marston

Emerge from your comfort
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Make yourself comfortable and enjoy it for a while. Then get yourself away from the comfort.

Reward yourself with comfortable, expected experiences. Then get out into life, into the unknown, into the uncomfortable, and earn even more rewards.

It’s powerful to know you can come back to a comfortable, secure, predictable place. But as soon as the comfort starts to become complacency, you’ve had more than enough.

In a state of comfort, you have potential opportunities for improvement. If you’re moving along at a pace that’s comfortable, for example, you have the chance to pick up the pace and lengthen your stride for a few miles.

When you find yourself getting too comfortable, let that prompt you to consider the possibilities for your next adventure, your next advancement. When you’re confident that you know what to expect, you’re able to aim that confidence in new and unexpected directions.

Life is a continuing process of renewal, and effective renewal necessarily involves some challenge. Choose to regularly emerge from your comfort, to face new challenges, and reap the many benefits of doing so.

— Ralph Marston

Curate your activities
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Over time, harmful and pointless habits can creep into the way you live your life. When you’re able to recognize and replace them, those habits represent major opportunities for improvement.

Make room for more good and useful activities by letting go of the useless, negative pursuits. Identify a waste of your time that you could easily do without and challenge yourself to replace it.

Zero in on a replacement you can look forward to and get enthusiastic about. Offer yourself a genuine and desirable reward for making better use of your time, energy, and resources.

Improve your results by improving your choices. Add richness to your life by being positive and proactive about what you do with your days.

You have an excellent, innate understanding of what serves you best and what doesn’t. So apply that understanding, let it guide your choices and inspire your actions.

Trade in tired, fruitless habits for energizing, enriching ones. Carefully curate your activities and optimize the value they bring to life.

— Ralph Marston