Lift & Drag

We celebrated with a trip to SkyZone with two of her friends, Steak ‘n Shake for dinner and a sleepover complete with pranks that they pulled on one another.  They awoke with “secrets” and lots of giggles as well as silly sayings marked all over their faces.  The cupcakes and snacks mysteriously disappeared and oddly, we found a lot of frosting in strange places so we’re pretty confident there was a prank involving cupcakes.  I’ve never been more grateful to have two dogs.  They make a great cleanup crew.

My oldest daughter, Caroline (23), came home for the weekend to be a part of the birthday festivities.  On Saturday she and I escaped for some girl time and left Mike to fend for himself with the wild ones.  As Caroline has matured we’ve had so many great conversations.  I try to take advantage of these times together to share some wisdom about what I’ve learned through trial and error while also listening carefully to what she is telling me.  Over the last six months or so I’ve been really driving home the point about “LIFT” and “DRAG”.

In the field of aerodynamics, LIFT is the force that acts at a right angle to the direction of the motion through the air and DRAG is the force that acts opposite to the direction of motion.

I truly believe that the people who are in our lives either provide LIFT—meaning they challenge us to become our best selves and do not allow us to settle or be complacent; they tell us the truth, lovingly, even when we don’t want to hear it; they encourage us when we lose confidence—or they provide DRAG—meaning they work hard to hold us back; sabotage our efforts to improve ourselves by enabling our bad habits and behaviors; commiserate with us in our misery.

It’s important that we each surround ourselves with LIFT and prune the relationships from our lives that create DRAG.

This doesn’t mean you disown your family or drop your childhood best friend.  It means you need to look objectively at who you have in your life and consider if they are helping you or hurting you from becoming your best and living your best life.

If you need more LIFT in your life, actively seek it in new friendships, support groups, and working teams.  As an example, if you have always wanted to get a college degree and those around you are telling you, “you don’t need a degree…what would you do with it anyway?”, it’s time to find a group that encourages you to figure out how to get your degree.  Find a mentor/friend/coach.  Want to get better at managing money but everyone around you tells you, “why bother? You’ll always be broke.”  Find someone you admire who is great with their money and ask for guidance and to be held accountable for your money decisions.

As you are reflecting, you may discover that you are DRAG is someone’s life—possibly your own.  If that’s the case, commit to changing your way of thinking and behaving.  Work toward being supportive of your own and their dreams.  If we ban together and are LIFT for the people and families in our community, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.

Be LIFT.