Mikes Blog

Familiar harbor
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Are you holding tightly to something that’s not moving forward? Then you’re not moving forward either.

Is there a habit, assumption, concept, perspective, that you’ve been hesitant to let go of? Could it be keeping you stuck, preventing you from making progress?

It’s comfortable to stick firmly with what’s familiar, expected, and predictable. Yet at some point that comfort will harden into stagnation.

A big part of improvement is letting go of whatever may be blocking that improvement. Yes it takes courage, yes it takes strength, and yes it will make a major positive difference.

What you’re able to accomplish is a function of what you’re willing to relinquish. By letting go of what is, you expand the possibilities of what can be.

You must leave the familiar harbor if you wish to cross the stormy sea. Yet oh, what a magnificent world awaits your discovery when you do.

— Ralph Marston

Purposeful life
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If you don’t have a well-defined purpose, you’re likely to follow anyone in any direction. If you’re not clear about where you intend to go, you’re not going to like where you end up.

When you’re purposeful, distractions are an annoyance, yet your purpose will pull you back on track. When you have no purpose, even the smallest distraction can lead you off into a vast expanse of wasted living.

It is not easy to live a purposeful life. But what’s far worse is a meaningless life.

Ask yourself what exactly you want, what you care about, what you love. Keep asking until you get an answer that you cannot deny.

Then take that purpose and lodge it firmly in the forefront of your awareness. Keep it there, to serve as a guide, a shield, and a powerful lens through which you focus your energy.

Life overflows with abundance, possibilities, opportunities. Align yourself in a specific direction, and enable yourself to make good use of it all.

— Ralph Marston

Light of your love
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You’re able to recognize the imperfections of others, because those imperfections exist in you as well. Your desire for others to change, is largely a longing for your own growth and improvement.

When you’re dismayed by the actions of others, let it inspire you first to change your own behavior. After all, the person you can most effectively and immediately improve, is you.

The most powerful way to transform your experience of being, is to transform yourself, with love. And when you seek to transform the world, that is without question the best way to start.

You could vanquish every enemy, eliminate every external injustice, and your own imperfection would still exist. So wouldn’t it be smarter to work on that before you set off to fix everyone else?

If you fear, pity, or despise every person who falls short of perfection, you’ll end up with no one left to love. Instead, forgive yourself, improve yourself, love yourself for who you are, and generously extend that love far, wide, deep.

You cannot fight the darkness away. Yet it will always recede wherever you sincerely shine the light of your love.

— Ralph Marston

Play time
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Young children make massive developmental progress in amazingly short periods of time. And they do it by playing.

Children don’t try to develop their minds, they don’t worry, don’t strive or plot or struggle. They simply ride along on whim and curiosity, and play.

How long has it been since you let yourself play? Maybe today you could find some new insight and inspiration in doing so.

Take a thought, or a task, or a situation, or a problem, and just play with it. Instead of resolving to end up someplace in particular, go where whimsy leads.

Let go of any notion that anything has to be this way or that. Ignore what should be, while you discover all that can be.

Play for a while, just for the delight it brings you. And you’ll discover once again that it brings you a lot more than mere delight.

— Ralph Marston