What Do You Expect?

Enjoy looking forward

Expect a positive outcome, and then go make it happen. Expect a fulfilling experience, and then go get it.

A positive expectation doesn’t guarantee a positive outcome, but it sure does make it more likely. When you expect the best, you give yourself many distinct advantages.

A positive expectation enables you to see more positive, workable possibilities. A positive expectation gives you a solid reason and a powerful motivation to push forward.

When you wish to go in a particular direction, it helps to first turn and face in that direction. By expecting your most highly desired outcome, you can vividly envision and focus on a path that will get you there.

Your efforts impact the quality of your life, and your expectations impact your efforts. It just makes sense to make those influences as positive and affirmative as possible.

Enjoy looking forward to a positive, fulfilling future. Expect the best, and do the work to make it so. 

Lumpy richness

There will be pleasure and pain, triumphs and regrets. Embrace it all as it comes, make the best of it, and move steadily forward.

Disappointments will come, and then new opportunities will soon appear. Each day, each season will have its share of ups and downs, beginnings and endings.

Life is wonderfully rich, and yet that richness is not creamy and smooth like a chocolate milkshake. Life’s richness is highly lumpy and inconsistent, and that’s what makes it so magnificent.

You’re much more able to fully treasure the good times when you’ve been through difficulties. The victories taste so much sweeter after a string of defeats.

Just remember as you go along that it’s all part of the richness. Just as night gives value to day which in turn gives value to night, all life’s experiences mesh together in a truly sumptuous adventure.

On this day, in this moment, it is all yours to take in. Whatever may come, treasure the richness in all its lumpiness, now and always. 

Peace on the inside

You can choose to be active and involved on the outside while being fully at peace on the inside. It is a powerful way to live.

You can let all the changes and dramas, the comings and goings, and the ups and downs inspire and inform you. But you don’t have to let it all get to you.

There is a part of you that is whole and authentic and imperturbable. It is there that peace always lives.

Let the outer part of you be enthusiastically involved in the brilliant, exhilarating confusion and complexity of what’s going on. Let the inner part of you put it all in perspective.

It is authentic, deep-seated peace on the inside that enables you to be highly effective on the outside. Nothing can get to you or bring you down if you’re already filled with the best there is.

Choose to let a peaceful presence fill the deepest part of you. Allow that peace to give great power to all you do. 

Difficult circumstances

Don’t let your situation determine how you are. Let yourself decide and determine how the situation is.

Your attitude is never forced upon you by outside circumstances. On the contrary, your attitude is based on the way you choose to respond to whatever may come your way.

You can have a great day by choosing to be the person who will have a great day. You can live this day based on a strong, solid inner intention that never wavers.

What you encounter is important. Yet what’s much more important and influential is the way you encounter it.

It’s easy to blame difficult circumstances for a difficult day. It’s far better to live each day based not on what it brings, but rather on the positive value you choose to give it.

Instead of complaining or bragging about the difficulties, transcend them and live beyond them. Use the power you surely have, to make the best of even the most difficult circumstances. 

Too much to do

Are you overwhelmed by all the things you need to do? Then stop needing to do all of them and start actually doing one of them.

The best response to being overwhelmed is not to impress yourself or others with how overwhelmed you feel. The best response is disciplined, focused action.

Don’t be stopped, or even slowed down, by the fact that you can’t imagine getting it all done. Let go of your thoughts about what’s still left to do, and give all your attention to what you are doing, right here and now.

In fact, it’s a good thing you have so much to do. So gratefully accept that blessing and get going on the first task, and then the next, and the next.

You have a continuing stream of opportunities to make a difference. Keep yourself busy transforming those opportunities, one by one, into real value.

When there’s much that must be done, pick the most important thing and get busy. Get on the path to achievement, and keep going. 

Stop waiting

Don’t wait to be inspired. Get busy, and find your inspiration in making something good and useful happen.

Don’t wait for the moment to be right. Go ahead and make the moment right by what you do with it.

If you wish for fortune to shine upon you, give it a good reason to do so. The reliable way to be lucky is to make your own luck with your own efforts.

The way to get what you want is not to beg for it or hope for it or demand it. The way to get what you want is to do what you must to make it happen.

You know that, so go ahead and put your knowledge to good use. Feel the irreplaceable satisfaction that comes from being master of your own fate.

Stop waiting for life to be the way you want. Start doing all you can to make it great. 

Leave excuses behind

Excuses are the building blocks of failure. Actions are the building blocks of success.

At best, the energy you put into crafting a good excuse will merely keep you stuck where you are. Yet when you put the same amount of energy into taking positive action, you begin to move ahead.

When you notice yourself looking for an excuse, stop and ask this question. What action could be taken right now that would make the excuse unnecessary?

Excuses give you permission to give up. But that’s not something you really want to do.

Dig deeper, past the superficial impulse to make an excuse. Dig deeper, and connect with the things that matter most to you.

Make a new commitment to what really matters. Leave the excuses behind as you act to fulfill your best possibilities.

— Ralph Marston