Live Everyday

Choice in life

Strength is

Strength has no need to be showy or boastful. For true strength is quiet, calm, and intensely effective.

Strength is balance, and love and truth. Strength is when you choose to live as the authentic person you are.

-- Ralph Marston

Choices in Life

Let Life Flow

In all its beauty, let life flow. In its quiet stillness, let peace envelop you.

There is much you can accomplish when you focus on the positive possibilities. There is a whole universe to experience when you open your eyes to the wonder.

There is so much love within you. Allow it to come out.

There are so many good and positive things that you can do. Fill this moment with the best of them.

Let the goodness flow in and fill you. Then let it flow out from you with your own special essence.

With calm, peaceful, loving confidence, let life flow in you and through you. Live the real treasure that is now.

-- Ralph Marston

Success is Waiting

Chose to be happy today

Change your tomorrow

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
-Agnes DeMille

Step boldly

There's something out there in life that will delight and amaze you. Get up, get moving, and go find out what it is.

There is always more to life than what you've already been doing day after day. Climb up out of your rut and have a look around.

You'll see things that will ignite your passion. You'll find richness you never knew was there.

Can you recall the last time you experienced the thrill of discovery? Remember how great it felt?

You are wonderfully equipped to explore new territory. So by all means, make use of that valuable skill.

Inject some priceless energy into your life. Step boldly into the world and see what great things you can discover.

n Ralph Marston

Be Brave and there is tomorrow

Improvement

"Improvement stops when we start believing that ideas about how to improve are insulting."

Story of using Perception to succeed

Transcript from a book about communication and perception. Following example shows how perception can influcen the life.

To illustrate, the authors cite the following example of how perception influences the outcome of a situation: Two people are walking their dogs in a wooded area. Both are wearing corduroy pants. When one person returns home and enters her garage, she notices her pants are covered with prickly burrs. When she tries to remove the burrs, she finds they are nearly impossible to pull off and that they prick and scratch her fingers. Her reaction is annoyance, and she decides the pants are ruined. When the second person returns to his home, his pants are also covered with burrs, but he reacts with curiosity, wondering how the burrs have attached themselves so stubbornly even though he barely brushed against the bushes. The second person in this scenario is actually George deMestral. After examining the burrs under a microscope, he came up with the design for Velcro, a multi-million dollar product.

Shift your perception habits from ordinary to high value and you will produce more benefit in less time than you ever have before. You will become a communication catalyst.”

Tackling your enemies

Here is a transcript from the book to tackle enemies

"The saying goes 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,' which Corleone demonstrates with tact. It's always vital to practice verbal discipline in deciding how much of your /own/ agenda to share, but especially when confronting /others'/ hidden agendas. Don't be so outspoken about hidden agendas in peers or bosses that you go on their list for retaliation. Whether tempted by your Power of Ideas integrity or Power of Person ego, tread lightly around secret motives. Your friends may come and go, but your enemies accumulate."

Real Challenge

When disaster strikes, there are no magic words that will make everything all right. For if there were, life would necessarily have to be unbearably empty and shallow in order to accommodate them.

What there is, is the opportunity and the obligation to love as you never have before. What there is, is the stimulus to take life to a higher level.

In your moments of most profound challenge, you are left with only what truly matters. And that is a powerful place to be.

When you are forced to experience life at its worst, it compels you to be your best. You must call upon a level of strength you never before knew was there.

And then, you begin to work through it. As you choose to move forward, life takes on greater, more profound meaning.

Choose to love, and choose to live. That is what you can do, and that is where the real magic will happen.

-- Ralph Marston

Have Faith

Doing business with Integrity

Here is the transcript of the mail from Kent Beck to Ron Jeffries about doing business with Integrity. Being an integrity craze, I thought it might be a worthwhile to remember...

"Ron,
From the contents of your message I don't think we share the same view. When you say that integrity is 'cold comfort', I am certain we don't agree. Yes, I need money (very badly right now in fact), but giving up my integrity for money is 'cold comfort'. No one is going to win all their bids, not even sleazeball liars who quote unreasonably low prices and more than make it up on exhorbitant charges for change requests and bug fixing. When you abandon your standards to get business, you always lose. There is nothing magical or special about me that lets me sell with integrity. Anyone can choose to. I have made contracts in just the way I described and others have reported similar experiences to me. Selling is unpredictable, for example whether you will win this particular contract. When you are selling business relationships you want some level of compatability with the client. Not all clients would be good matches. Better to find that out at the onset. Selling from a position of integrity takes less bravado and provides its own confidence. The consequence you can count on is being able to sleep nights with your integrity intact. If that costs me a little fear sometimes, I'll pay. I'm told it gets easier with practice. There is plenty of fear for the client in the old style of bidding jobs as well. The customer's fear that they will not get what they need from you (based on their past experiences with contractors) is one of the biggest barriers to selling your services. This seems like a good opportunity to embrace change.
Sincerely yours,
Kent Beck Three Rivers Institute"

Be True to Yourslef

Do yourself some favor

Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less.
-Ken Blanchard

Give yourself some distance

Many of the things that get to you are not worth the energy and the trouble that you invest in them. Do yourself a favor, and give yourself some distance from them.

Break the pattern of automatically reacting in the same way, time after time, to all the minor disturbances that come along. Sometimes, the best response is no response at all.

Seek to rise above the petty dramas that don't do anyone any good. Keep in mind that where you put your awareness and your attention is where your life will go.

There are so many beautiful, positive outlets for your energy. Every day is full of possibilities for building, creating, loving, learning and growing.

Certainly there will always be difficulties in life that must be addressed and attended to. Yet there is no reason to make for yourself any needless difficulties of confrontations.

A sign of true strength is the willingness to completely let go of the things that don't really matter. Choose to exercise that strength, and keep life focused in a positive, meaningful direction.

-- Ralph Marston