We all aspire to live a life wherein we experience challenges that we are able to overcome and these experiences do not hurt our growth and development.  Simply put, we expect things to happen and we deal with them and move on to the next circumstance.  Let’s proposition a different existence of one in which we aspire to live a life of “increase.”  With increase being defined as an upsurge, rise, growth, escalation, or upturn.  Where our life’s goal is to not just to survive – but to thrive and increase ourselves with each experience.  Imagine experiencing real increase that covers, and does not leave out not even, one of the domains of our life – health, personal development, finances, spirituality, family/friends, recreation, environment, an education.  When a person becomes intolerable of cyclical living – of experiencing spikes and lows of focus and motivation – and decide to embrace life with all of its imperfections with a decisive attitude to be upbuilding and positive about whatever life delivers.

Life Domain                            Ultimate Courage to:

Health/Fitness                       Fit, Maximize, and Healthy

Education                                Know, Seek, and Acquire

Financial                                  Have and Give

Spirituality                              Believe Unconditionally

Personal Development         Become, Thrive, Overcome, and Expand

Recreation                               Enjoy, Fun, Relax, and Challenge

Environment                           Live, Win, and Own

Family/Friends                       Belong and Love

A friend recently said “that people better watch out now because I am living a life of increase, not decrease.”  That proclamation about the prospects for the future can be so true if a person really wants to change.  However, a proclamation like that beckons for the real ______ (person) to please stand up and be recognized and counted in their lives and the lives of others.  Living a life of increase requires us to surround ourselves with people, places, and things that have the capacity and tendency to the help us redesign ourselves toward a future that has never been seen before.   We must recognize that an experience that already has touched ourselves once has did everything it was supposed to do and can do that time around.  The increase is going to come from trying something different so we yield something different and increase our potential and move toward our true destiny.

The beginning of this journey to “increase” ourselves will be lonely and isolative until we find others to be in fellowship with that are similar minded and destiny focused.  However, venture not to feel desperate and forsaken.  Journey forward with the understanding that “increase” requires and investment of time, energy, and conviction.  Increase is not given to the people wanting an immediate return on their time investment, lack drive, or principles.

Deliberate plans of action must be undertaken that usher increase into your life because nothing happens by osmosis. Honest assessments and courageous encounters with people, places and things that cannot go with you on this journey, must be completed.  The increase you desire will open you up to new relationships and place you in new environments that you never would have been exposed to before at your previous level of existence.

Clarity of thought, raised self-esteem, and elevated performance in the domains of life you target will enhance your life as well as those lives that you touch. The gift that you are becomes clear for yourself and other to see; your reason for living becomes energized and the level of appreciation that you have for all good things that surround you becomes more intense. You realize (through your personal journey) that what you see before you came with a price and for some that price was plenty and we need to stop living a life of decrease but instead a life of increase and forever be changed.

Finally, as we look at what has been the fuel of decrease.  As we seek to ask and answer the who, what, where, when, how, and the why of our decrease.  The answer is simple – we have been reluctant to do good and fearless to do badly in the eight domains of our lives.  We need to work with earnest to live a life of increase and transpose the aforementioned into a life concentrated on being fearless to do to good and reluctant to do badly.  It is when we have this proper order for our efforts that we can live a true life of increase that flows with rapidity and pervasiveness.

Dr. Nathaniel J. Williams – www.drnatwilliams.com