“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”

Booker T. Washington

The amount of effort and energy expended pushing people down in this world seems to outweigh that which is spent helping others. It’s hard to read or watch the news anymore because everything seems to have a political or negative bent. Being exposed to a continually negative environment can certainly influence how you leverage your own strengths and talents and we have to guard against that influence.

If you were to think of your daily energy spend how much of it would be spent on “pushing down” versus “pulling up?” Hopefully more is spent on the latter than the former. Thinking about this another way. What are your unique gifts and talents? How much time do you use leveraging these to help others versus pushing others down? What is one additional thing you can do today to pull someone up?