Mikes Blog

The best way forward
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Declining to lift a weight will not make you stronger. Refusing to deal with a challenge will not make the challenge go away.

Giving yourself less to do will not enable you to get more done. Putting off your work will not result in accomplishment.

Rise to the challenges. Do it sooner rather than later.

Your activities on any day can be easy or they can be meaningful, but not both. A week from now, a decade from now, meaningful will bring much more richness to your world than easy.

Of all your choices today, which ones will result in new value? Go with those.

The best way forward will demand much from you. This is your chance to give it willingly, enthusiastically, and to enjoy the goodness that flows from all you’re able to accomplish.

— Ralph Marston

Get up and go
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You can do it when you set your mind to it. You can do it when you commit your time to it.

You can do it when you stride confidently past your doubts. You can do it when you decide not to plunge into the pit of meaningless distractions.

You can do it when you have a good, meaningful reason. You can do it when you keep going for as long as necessary.

You can do it when your desire for achievement overpowers your desire for comfort, convenience, and self-pity. You can do it when you go ahead and take the next step no matter what just happened.

You can do it when you realize how worthless and debilitating the excuses have become. You can do it when you remind yourself that a single action is more effective than a thousand complaints.

What great good do you envision for your world, for your life? You can do it when you are ready, when you muster the will, when you get up and go.

— Ralph Marston

Untold riches
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You are not a flat, static image to be tweaked, edited, optimized and disseminated. You are a deep and complex bundle of yearnings, contradictions, experiences, wonder, vulnerability, and love.

You are more than you could ever know or express. And so is every other person.

Within that truth are endless possibilities for connection, understanding, richness, achievement, and joy. Ask yourself, what are you doing to respect and explore that infinitely fertile ground?

It’s convenient to walk around with simple, unchanging, one-dimensional tokens in your mind to represent yourself and others. But it’s essential to remember that your overly-simplified map is not the territory itself.

In this life, in this reality, in this existence, you have just barely scratched the surface. The great thing is, there is no limit to how deep you can go.

What could you do today to know yourself better, and to more richly connect with someone else? Here is your opportunity, here is your challenge, your call to untold riches.

— Ralph Marston

Give to yourself
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Give to yourself some goodness. Give to yourself some love.

Give yourself some time, attention, patience, and care. Give yourself understanding and acceptance.

Know how good it feels when you are genuinely good to yourself. Then realize how easily and naturally you can expand that good feeling to others.

Be good to yourself not out of selfishness, but to gain skill and experience. Create within yourself a source and a supply of goodness that you can share with all of life.

The more generously you give to yourself the more effectively you can give to those around you. Accept and understand yourself, and you’ll further your acceptance and understanding of others.

What you have to give is what you have first given yourself. Give generously, and let that generosity expand far and wide.

— Ralph Marston