Mikes Blog

With kindness
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Even if your kindness is not acknowledged or appreciated, it is worth your effort. When you experience yourself giving genuine kindness, that always has value to you.

Kindness brings out the best in you, strengthens your strengths, mitigates your weaknesses. Kindness connects you like nothing else can.

Kindness has its greatest power when you are least inclined to offer it. Kindness can be vastly more effective at resolving discord than anger, contempt or retribution.

Being the first to offer kindness can give you a powerful advantage. Persisting in your kindness, you can use that advantage to everyone’s benefit.

Genuine kindness, accompanied by genuine humility, makes life significantly better for you and those around you. Kindness has a power that is difficult to ignore, difficult to oppose, difficult to stop.

Whatever you do, do it with kindness. And achieve optimum results for everyone involved.

— Ralph Marston

Find the positive
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Unless you are a multi-billionaire, pessimism is a luxury you cannot afford. You owe it to yourself to find something positive in even the most distressing situation.

Negative thoughts waste your time and drain your energy. If you find yourself consumed with pessimism, ask some serious questions.

How much of your life are you willing to give away in return for nothing? How much potential good fortune are you willing to forgo just so you can indulge your negativity?

You do not have to be negative in order to be realistic. You can see what’s truly there and also, always, envision a positive way forward.

It often requires much effort to uncover and to follow the positive possibilities. Yet the results you achieve are worth all that effort.

Invest your thoughts, your focus, your actions to the benefit of all you love and care about. Find the positive, no matter what, and bring it fully to life.

— Ralph Marston

What if now is one of those times you’ll look back on with gratitude for having been through? What if this is one of those situations you’ll someday wish you had made better use of?

Many of your most valuable experiences didn’t seem so great at the time. Perhaps this experience will one day join that list.

Certainly you’re faced with difficulties you’d rather not have. Yet in each of those difficulties, there is also opportunity.

Imagine that you could focus more on the opportunities and less on the difficulties. What would that look like, and how would it feel?

Think about putting more of your energy into positive action and spending less of that energy on worry and resentment. How would that affect your current attitude, and what impact would it have on your future?

Maybe this is, in fact, one of those times you’ll end up being very thankful for. Or if it’s not already, you can make it one.

— Ralph Marston

Storms will come
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Whether you’re careful or careless, rigidly disciplined or loosely organized, here’s something you can expect. Every now and then, storms will come your way.

Sometimes you’ll see them coming a long way off. Other times they’ll pop up out of nowhere.

They will blow, they will disrupt, they may leave some damage behind. And then they will go.

The storms won’t care whether you’re prepared or not. They will not accommodate any prior plans you may have had.

Yet life’s storms will compel you to grow stronger, more capable and resilient. You’ll gain experience, wisdom, confidence, and respect.

Occasionally the storms will come, so do what you must do to get through them. And deepen your appreciation for the clear, beautiful days that arrive after the storms have passed.

— Ralph Marston