Motivation. For all of us. Right?

I am a big believer in our mind’s susceptibility to messages–positive and negative. We all have an inner demon and an inner angel–the voice that suppresses our innate strength, or the voice that lifts us up. We all know that if we listen to the wrong voice, as we are all apt to do from time to time, we are liable to go off-track. So it’s important to fill our minds with the right thoughts.

I’ve been needing some good old home-grown motivation. The kind of stuff that just advocates for straight-up forward motion. To help get me started, I searched for a list of easy motivational quotes–pithy, quick, well-worded little pieces of sage advice, compiled by people who get how much we all need to have a big ol’ dose of “get ‘er done” drowning out the nonsense that would otherwise ensure we’d never get a thing done at all.

Little things can make the biggest difference. Have you noticed that? It doesn’t have to be a cataclysmic, earth-shattering, massive-scale enterprise of biggie things. Sometimes it’s just a small thing–a friend stopping by with a hug or a cup of tea, or a small flower that surprises you on your walk, or a happy story of success somewhere in the world. Today it was a man who commented on one of my posts with pictures of flowers in Algeria–it totally lifted me up! The flowers from Algeria are simply remarkable and I am so glad that I got to see them! Or a reminder to keep things simple and do the small thing first if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the little things and the big things all at once, like, say, planting a giant farm and hundreds of flowers and making it all look pretty and painting the kitchen and cleaning the house and folding all the laundry and making sure your kids dreams come true and changing the broken justice system and stopping people from killing each other accidentally with guns and wishing you had the running ability you used to because it’s harder to get started today than it used to be and trying to figure out who to email first–the governor or your best friend–then you might need a little dose of this, too. And it might come down to the basics: Plant the flowers and hope they bloom. It’s the best you can do.