Lift or Drag?
By: Steele Roddick
Tags: Ideas, Mindset, Motivation, Inspiration, Positivity

Psychedelic image by Mark Lore

Coffee provides lift. It gets us over the initial hurdle of starting the day. It helps get the ball rolling. Puts momentum on our side. Ideally, we ride the caffeine wave all the way to lunch.

Drinking too much on Saturday night has the opposite effect. It creates drag. Sells Sunday short. You do less, much less, and you fail to get a jumpstart on the week ahead. The drag hangs over to Monday.

Gratitude, exercise, kindness, caring, actively listening, deliberately practicing and proactively helping all provide lift. Resentment, inactivity, meanness, shame, checking out, failing to engage and intentionally harming all create drag.

Lift and drag matter because momentum matters, likely more than you think.

The reason a lot of things are the way they are is that it takes too much energy to change them. There must be a will for there to be a way. And that will must be stronger than the force of the status quo, the inertia of what already is, the weight of the world.

Last year I realized how powerful the status quo really is. In sales they say your biggest competition isn’t your competitors, it’s complacency.

It’s always easier to do nothing, and in a world where energy and cares are in short supply, nothing often gets done. Even when it should. Even when there’s good reason to change.

That realization has been helpful. But it’s also been painful, because in turn, I’ve noticed that I create far more drag than I’d like to admit.

I drag myself down with mindless time-wasting, destructive patterns and broken promises. I create drag for those around me when I flake on commitments, when I don’t do what I say I’m going to, when I allow my worst habits to die hard.

Moving forward, I intend to pay closer attention to what I can do to provide more lift and what I need to stop doing to eliminate drag.

Because the world needs more lift. When I was at my lowest, I needed more lift.

Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, damaged and depressed, my then girlfriend, now wife, could’ve left. It would’ve been easier. But instead she stayed and lifted.

So did my mom. So did her boss, who offered me an opportunity to work in a garden at a hospice. So did the horticultural therapist who worked in that garden. She took an interest in me, listened to my story, related to my pain. With hard gardening work and meaningful conversations, she pulled me out of a hole I wasn’t sure I could climb out of on my own. And the lovely women and men who volunteer at that hospice helped too.

That place, those people, changed the trajectory of my life.

Lift is what you need to get out of a rut, unstuck. Lift is what turns insurmountable mountains into soon-forgotten speed bumps.

Drag, on the other hand, digs the rut deeper, pulls you down, holds you back, stops you from even trying. Too much drag leads to hopelessness and despair.

Imagine trying to push a car that’s run out of gas. You push with all your might, but can’t get it to budge. If you’re stuck in that situation, you’re screwed regardless of how hard you push.

Now imagine that as you were pushing your hardest, your good friend Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson walked by and gave the car just enough of a nudge to get it rolling.

That moment of lift might be all you need to roll all the way to the nearest gas station.

Every day you either provide lift or create drag. Whether you think about it like that or not. There’s no way to opt out.

A kind word, a held door, or a knowing glance might be the lift someone needs to get through the day.

An angry remark, a careless collision, or a harsh look could be the drag that leads someone to crash.

If that sounds like a lot of responsibility, it is. It’s a responsibility we must embrace. A responsibility to ourselves and to others to give more than we take, to help more than we harm, to provide lift instead of creating drag.

And of course, we will all have bad days. There will be times when you can’t help but drag.

But here’s a secret: other people want to lift you up. Lifting others helps us lift ourselves.

So when you need help, ask. Be honest about being in need of a lift. Be clear about what you need and what would help. That creates constructive opportunities for those around you to lift you up, rather than allowing the drag to become destructive.

The more we work together to provide lift, the better off we’ll be.

Because we need momentum on our side. I need you on my team and you need me on yours. We need to push together. Ideally, we get The Rock to push too.

Because we are all in the same boat, longingly looking skyward, feeling the weight of the world on our shoulders, pulling us down, holding us back, paralyzing our dreams.

That’s how we all feel.

So do what you can to lift those around you. Offer to pull or to push. Build a ramp or a runway.

Be the wind blowing in the right direction. Be the tide that raises all ships. Be the ladder that allows others to climb.

Lift, don’t drag. And let us all take flight together.

Steele

PS. This article was originally published in my Sunday morning newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.