Life is a Stairwell In many ways, whole process of personal growth is like living life in a stairwell. We are constantly trying to make our way to top. But there are obstacles. The steps, themselves, sometimes prove to be aproblem. Each time we take a step up we are closer to our destination. But sometimes we become too tired to go on. Sometimes we don’t pick our foot up high enough and we trip. And occasionally we may even lose our balance and go tumbling down toward bottom. While parallels of living life and walking up stairs may seem obvious when we think about it, I believe that it is safe to say that most people don’t fully understand nature of whole process. The fact is, it plays out in a lot of ways in our lives. We see it in emotional arena. It is a goal of most of us to stay motivated and be happy. But how many times have you struggled with discouragement and depression which caused you to fall? We see this in physical arena as we try to stay in good physical condition. Everybody knows, through personal experience, that being trim, having a good strong heart and lungs, and fit developing strong muscles makes you feel and work better. But how many times have you let yourself become fatigued and out of condition? We also see principle operating in mental arena as we take classes and certification courses to become smarter and more qualified to advance. But we have all experienced those times when our brains just would not wrap around material we needed to master, and felt knocked down. Finally, we see it in spiritual arena as we work to improve all of important relationships in our lives. And even though we work hard in this area, we still find ourselves struggling with poor self-esteem, or poor communication skills.

Putting it All Together Grasping concept that there are various areas of life that we have to pay attention to, in order to grow, is a tremendous step. But, there is another level of understanding we have to come to if we really want to get benefit from this insight. In process of trying to grow, some people work very hard in one part of life. Some put great effot in two or even three areas at one time. However, to really experience lasting and continuous growth, we have to work on all four areas - all time. We can separate out four areas of our lives for purpose of thinking about growth, but fact is we are a single individual and what affects one area affects them all. Growth in one area takes our whole life forward and regression in one area drags our whole self down. That is why issues in even one area can cause us to slow our ascension up stairs or even cause us to fall down. But if we know this, we are in a position to make ourselves more effective. Life is, basically, lived at levels. At every moment we are on some stair step in our journey through life. We labor at one level, hopefully getting closer and closer to time when we can make it up to next step. Then, when we make it, we begin working on next one. We all have capacity to massively advance in every area of life. The sad truth is, though, most people simply don’t exert energy that is necessary to make it happen. Instead of intentionally working toward a life goal, they just take things as they come - advancing, or not, as life comes to them. These people are doomed to a life of taking steps forward then hitting a difficult spot and rolling to bottom of stairs. But we have capacity to go forward. Sure there will be struggle. Sure there will be times when we stumble. But at those times we learn from struggle and grow. At those times, if we make it our lifestyle choice, we can fall up stairs, not down, then get up and keep on going.