Daily Motivation Boost

Curate your activities 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 re...

Say yes to something You can’t say yes to everything. Yet you can always say yes to something. You wouldn’t want to cram your calendar so full that you’re in a perpetual state of haste and anxiety. But neither do you want to string empty hours upon more empty hours and days. It can be all too easy to hide away from life, and to cite good reasons for doing so. But just because it’s the easiest choi...

Journey around the sun You’ve circled around the sun once more, along with everyone else. Consider what you’ve learned, experienced, discovered, abandoned. Now brings a new chance to make good use of all you’ve been through. Everything that’s accrued to your unique existence, you can re-focus toward meaningful purpose. Give yourself some time to feel how you feel, to care about what you care about...

Value in every direction You can find value in every direction, in every place and time. Let yourself be inspired by the value, and in that state of inspiration, expand it. Perhaps what you once dismissed, you can consider now with thoughts more nuanced and a spirit more generous. Maybe what you’ve always ignored, you could offer a few moments of attention. Life is often what you expect, but not a...

Opportunity for action Now is your opportunity to do what must be done. Make good and profitable use of that opportunity. The opportunity decreases every moment it is not utilized. Eventually it is gone for good. Before that happens, do something worthwhile with the opportunity for action. Transform the best of what can be into the reality of what is. You have the means and the ability right now t...

Sustained ambition It’s easy to be ambitious for a few minutes, and maybe even get some impressive work done in that time. What’s more challenging, and what will produce results that approach true greatness, is sustained ambition. If you can muster a little ambition for a little while, then you know you’re capable of it. That means you’re also capable of a steady and sustained ambition over longer...

Think, do, learn Pretty much nothing unfolds in exactly the way you imagine it. You can speculate, re-consider, plan, and anticipate, yet once you start to take action, everything changes. Action transforms thoughts into reality. Although thought and action each have value, they are decidedly distinct creatures and cannot be substituted one for the other. Give thought to your actions, then give ac...

Life moves forward New experience gives added value to old experience, and vice versa. Treasure them both in their own ways. What you learn is always built on what you know. That’s good to consider especially when the new turns out to directly contradict the old. In such a case, understand the old in a new light but resist the temptation to denigrate it. After all, it’s what got you where you are....

It is Christmas Regardless of what you believe or what you don’t, this day is special. It is Christmas. Out of the darkness, light shines forth. In the coldest season, as has never failed for centuries, warmth ensues. Some will sing, others will feast, many will gather, a few will avoid, but no one can ignore that this day is different. It makes you wonder, and that’s the point. Wonder is somethin...

Expression of life Make today an expression of life. Craft that expression in exquisite detail, honest, authentic, original. Put your hopes, your doubts, your passions into it. Generously offer your expression of life solely for the sake of doing so. Life survives and thrives to the degree it is genuinely expressed. Do, experience, grow, share, and perpetuate the beauty of existence. Ride the ener...

Who do you imitate? Much of what you do comes from the influence and examples of others. Ask yourself, who are those others? Who are the people whose desires, habits, values and perspectives you respect and seek to emulate? Even more significantly, how well have those people done in living lives of quality and fulfillment? When so much of the information you consume comes from anonymous sources, d...

Know by being Know not only with your mind and your senses. Know by doing, know by living, know by being. Know with the whole of your existence. Know through the integration of your experience with your spirit. Some things in life are far too important to be mediated through the pages of a book or the pixels on a screen. Fully know the richness and the wonder by being an integral part of it all. D...

What you don’t know You don’t know it all, you won’t know it all, you can’t know it all. Free yourself to think more clearly by accepting that you haven’t thought of everything. Certainly your knowledge and reasoning bring great value to your world. Yet that value can be destroyed by arrogance. You know what you know, and that’s great. Yet there’s always more to know, factors you haven’t considere...

Refining your desires Value arises from effort, not from desire alone. Desire helps you understand what has meaning, but it is neither the source of meaning nor the fulfillment of value. Desires have great power and also much variety. Like every other powerful force, any particular desire can be highly beneficial or can lead to disastrous results. The desires that push you to bring real, lasting v...

Spark of hope Focus on the opportunities. Persevere through the difficulties. Remind yourself that those difficulties and opportunities are often two aspects of the same reality. Offer yourself the wisdom to consider differing perspectives on the same situation. As you do so, take good care of yourself. Nurture and engage your potential to bring good out of whatever happens. Your circumstances are...

Pushing the possibilities You are right now situated at the center of your own unique universe of possibilities. Those possibilities can assemble to oppress you into oblivion or lift you to unimaginable heights, depending largely on how and to what purpose you interact with them. You perceive only a few of the most adjacent possibilities, and can imagine a little of what extends out beyond them. B...

Value for your time There’s no time to waste, so what do you do? You hurry, and while all that hurrying can create much activity, it often produces poor results. Rarely is it a good tactic to put yourself into such a rush. In the effort to hurry because time is short, you can easily end up wasting even more time. Consider a couple of things. First, if you really don’t have time to focus and do a g...

Enduring richness What a sad and empty life is pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, but with no joy. What a torment to be consumed with possessions, possessions, possessions, but no substance. How hollow is an existence of ease, convenience, gratification, but no fulfillment. Days are full of spectacles, dramas, thrills, but no meaning. Experiences unfold with speed, activity, sensation, but no understan...

Just be you It’s a waste of your effort to try and second guess what people want you to be like. Just be you, just be true. Some people will not respond positively to the way you are. That’s a good thing to find out early so you can move on from them. Fortunately, there are plenty of people who will value your authenticity. You’ll discover who they are by being who you truly are. Do seek to listen...

What can you do? What matters is what you can do. In any situation, in any time, with any person, with any kind of drama that’s going on, with any kind of challenge that faces you, the thing to ask is this. What can you do about it? With any kind of limitations you run up against, with any kind of environment you find yourself in, with any type of people you’re working with, what matters is what y...

Start now, and continue You can’t do it all at once. But you can do it. You’re not going to master a new language, run a marathon, or build a thriving business the day after you decide to do so. Yet you’re able to accomplish all those things, and more, with small steps. You can put time on your side. You can use the hours, weeks, and years to make steady progress. That progress usually doesn’t occ...

Going to the trouble Living a productive, successful day can be a lot of trouble. Go to the trouble. Getting yourself in a good place physically, financially, spiritually, requires a good bit of trouble. It’s well worth the trouble. Value does not appear in your life simply because you think of it and desire it. You have to work it into existence. Do you ever feel like you don’t want to go to the...

The good Treasure the good you have known, and still know. Let it inspire you to make more of its kind, in its image. See if you can recognize what’s good in the eyes and ways of people around you. Remind yourself also of all that’s good about you. Refuse to use goodness as a weapon, as a way to blame, cudgel, shame, or embarrass. Practice goodness instead as an offering, a connection, a humble in...

The good Treasure the good you have known, and still know. Let it inspire you to make more of its kind, in its image. See if you can recognize what’s good in the eyes and ways of people around you. Remind yourself also of all that’s good about you. Refuse to use goodness as a weapon, as a way to blame, cudgel, shame, or embarrass. Practice goodness instead as an offering, a connection, a humble in...

The best within you Perhaps today is not your best day. And it’s likely you’re not in an ideal situation. Nonetheless, you can visualize what you would do if you were in fact experiencing your best day. And you can, to the best of your ability, work on doing it. You can imagine how you would move forward if indeed you were in an ideal situation. And you can incorporate elements of that response in...