Mikes Blog

Difference of perspective
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What you say is not what other people hear you say. What you hear other people say is not what they intend to say.

Everyone has various lenses, filters, biases, and perspectives through which they experience life. It’s an aid to understanding to keep that in mind.

Before you dismiss anyone as an idiot or praise anyone as a genius, catch yourself. Use your intellect and energy to more fully understand the content rather than to prematurely label its source.

You cannot remove yourself from your own perspective. You can, however, remind yourself that it’s always there.

If possible, in your own words repeat back what you heard, and ask if you understood correctly. Seek to clarify and better understand before you make any judgment.

Words have precise meanings, yet life experience and context can significantly expand and even alter those meanings. Speak clearly, listen carefully, then go as far as possible beyond the words to foster true and helpful understanding.

— Ralph Marston

Venture forward
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The unknown is filled with terrifying threats and wondrous beauty. Do you dare to go there?

If you avoid everything you don’t already know, your awareness, your spirit, your power collapse in on themselves. Your once-brilliant potential is corrupted into a losing battle for meaning and relevance.

Your very existence is established and supported by your ability to explore and encounter. Your desire to venture into the unknown and to deal with whatever you find, is what enables you to experience goodness itself.

You will run into problems, and maybe even monsters, as you expand the boundaries of your known world. Yet out there beyond where you now are, that’s where your life in all its richness must be lived.

Courage is not some rarefied, unobtainable quality available only to a select few. Courage is what you do, what you’ve done, what you’ll continue every time you step beyond what you already know.

All that dangerous, unexplored territory is where your treasures await. Keep yourself strong, capable, and clear about the dangers as you venture outward to claim those treasures.

— Ralph Marston

Let confidence take over
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Doubt and fear have ruled you for too long. Now is the time to let your confidence take over.

Confidence is no less real, no less reasonable than doubt. And confidence will take you to much better places.

You deserve more respect than you’ve been giving yourself. You deserve more challenge, and its accompanying achievement, than you’ve been allowing into your life.

Get yourself now in a frame of mind where you can do all the best things you’re capable of doing. Activate the confidence that’s always been there, and let it drive away every remnant of indecision.

Let confidence take over, then make absolutely certain to give that confidence its full due. With purpose, with persistence and enthusiasm, put your confidence into action.

Unleash the full power of your loving, creative potential. Let your confidence take over, and give to life today the best you can give.

— Ralph Marston

The bad stuff
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Don’t let all the bad stuff get to you. Let all the bad stuff amuse you, inspire you, teach you, and empower you.

Achievement is built on inconvenience. Achievement is built on interruptions.

Achievement is built on disappointment. Achievement is built on frustrations, problems, distractions, mistakes.

The moment to moment results you get are important. Yet who you are, and the attitude you possess, that’s much more important in the long run.

When your efforts fail to bear fruit, that’s not the end of the world. On the contrary, it’s another step toward your eventual success.

Rather than judging or blaming or complaining, persist in finding a way to do what you’ve chosen to do. See everything that happens for what it is, an opportunity to move forward.

— Ralph Marston