Key to Success

The key to success is not in some particular technique, program, ritual or idea. The key to your success is you, and what you do.

There are many great people, products, services, values and philosophies that can be extremely helpful. Yet any authentic, fulfilling success you enjoy will come largely from you.

Though you are highly deserving, success in life is not a foregone conclusion. However, you are fortunate to have the opportunity and the ability to make it happen.

If you wish to be successful, then give the best of yourself to that success. The extent of your success flows directly from the size of your commitment.

Be willing to step up and take full and continuing responsibility for your success. That’s what will make it happen.

Nothing will work to bring you success unless you work to bring about that success. Choose a goal that truly means something, do the work, and enjoy all the success you will surely create.

— Ralph Marston

Do Something for Yourself Today

Do something for yourself today. You can not get back a minute of your life. Become aware of the ways in which you gladly take on and accept the problems and challenges in others’ lives, instead of dealing with your own life or your future. Your life does not exist to trade your time to pay for what others want. You do not exist to rescue others from how they have decided to live their lives.

How are others using your time, talents, skills, experiences and knowledge for their bottom line, or to make their lives easier? If you were not around, others would figure it out! Live in your own life and stop rescuing others from the paths they have chosen for themselves. Ask yourself…is their commitment to act boldly and change their life as strong as their willingness to expect you to help or pay for them? Master the art of saying “yes” to you and your life. You Deserve!

-Les Brown

Ask More of Yourself

You can be more than you’ve been. You can be more than you’ve even hoped or dreamed or imagined.

You can learn more, do more, achieve more, give more, experience more, laugh more, love more and live more. You’re fully capable of all that, and more.

No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve already done, you can ask more of yourself. Then, you can truly enjoy the experience of making it happen.

By raising your own expectations, you put yourself on track to lift up the whole world. And the world will always welcome some more positive goodness and substance.

Ask more of yourself, of your life, of your skills, resources and time, and then deliver it. Seek to live in a permanent state of growth and improvement, and you will live well indeed.

You can always be more, and do more, and add more to the miracle that is life. Be more, and feel your growing positive energy as it fills your world.

— Ralph Marston

Choose to let go of the Guilt and be at Peace

Stop trying to change the people you love and change yourself! Stop trying to change people who take your money but will not take your advice. You will only drain your own mental, spiritual, emotional and financial reserves. The truth is…people change when they are sick and tired of being sick and tired or hit rock bottom.

If you are dealing with addiction or irresponsible behavior from grown adults ~ protect your wallet and your mind. It does not mean you do not love them. Your attempts to help may only delay what is inevitable. Allow them to take the journey they have chosen for themselves. Choose to let go of the guilt and be at peace. You may require counseling or emotional support to stop being an enabler. If necessary, give yourself some distance so that you can stop being used or manipulated because they know that you care and you love them. You have the right to enjoy a guilt-free, happy and productive life. Commit yourself to changing the only person you really can – YOU!! You have GREATNESS within you!!

• Les Brown

Presence of Possibility

Forget what you think you know, and remember who you know you are. Let go of the need for sensation, and experience the miracle of existence.

Breathe deeply the sweet, cool presence of possibility. Life means markedly more, yet a glorious place to start is with the meaning you give it.

Dart quickly from the thought that anything is mundane. Every great and tiny thing is anything but.

Your longings are not strange or irresponsible. They are you, and indeed your responsibility is to indulge them in creative and beneficial ways.

Joy is not some fleeting, fashionable amusement park ride. It is the gift you can inject into even the smallest, most ordinary moments, again and again.

Lovingly immerse your world in the unique joy you keep longing to create. All is now possible, and from that limitless realm your choices make life magnificent.

— Ralph Marston

Fall in love Again

Fall in love again…with your life and your dream. Take time to appreciate the brilliance, beauty, and magnificence of your own life. Never forget that you are an unrepeatable miracle! Great things are supposed to happen for you and through you. Care for yourself and nurture your vitality, energy and life force.

Silence your own unforgiving spirit and extreme self-criticism, that can steal your joy, harm your health and stunt your personal growth. Give up microwaved solutions to challenges and shortcuts to success. You can’t pull up a plant up from its roots to make it grow. The things that really matter in life take purposeful planning, time, love and care. Do your work, stay the course, live in the present and love yourself even more than you have in the past. You have GREATNESS within you!!

Les Brown

The Courage to Be a Leader

Leadership is not a position; it’s a choice.

Every day you have opportunities to be a leader, for the essence of leadership is inspiring people to move in a direction they may otherwise not have gone, to accomplish more than they may otherwise have sought to accomplish, and to grow into someone they may otherwise not have become.

By choosing the path of integrity, personal responsibility, and courage you will automatically shine your light so brightly that it will reveal to others the majesty of their own.

Ultimately, only by living with courage yourself and being the leader you are capable of being will humanity, as a collective, find it’s courage and lead the world into a future filled with possibility.

LOOK 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.

— Ralph Marston

Begin To make Courageous Choices

You are not your pain or your past. Refuse to become a victim of any circumstance, prior experience, person, or worse – a captive of your past life replayed over and over in your own mind. Commit to do the hard work and the heart work, so that your past will not define who you are, or who you can become. No matter what has happened, you have the ability to live beyond any moment and to create a purposeful, meaningful and joyful life. You were born to be the hero and the heroine of your own story. Embrace the possibility that everything that you have gone through can be used to make you gentler, kinder, more compassionate and loving with yourself and with others.

Begin to make courageous choices everyday that say you deserve to be happy. At any time, you have the power to begin again and to rebuild a new future and identity for yourself. Do something everyday which reminds you of your wholeness and of your power to heal your life. Remember…you have something special. You have GREATNESS within you!

Les Brown