“When you stretch higher than you’ve ever stretched before, you often find yourself standing a little taller than you’ve ever stood before.” ~KW

We all find ourselves stretching from time to time for something we’re trying to get at, something just beyond our grasp, up on the proverbial top shelves of life.

What we sometimes forget is that we have options, perhaps some that are so obvious we don’t think of them as real alternatives in other parts of our lives.

Regardless of what it is we’re trying to get at, the options include the following:

1. Get something else instead

Life is apt to send us little messages tied up in packages that are easy to miss.

And while it’s true that most challenges are there to help us grow in ways we couldn’t have grown without them, sometimes the challenge is a note telling us we’ve wandered off course, to move on or pick a different battle and regroup for next time under better circumstances or with a better plan.

2. Stretch a little further than you think you can

Life has the tendency of stretching us, calling from us more than we thought we had inside. The miracle of this process is that when we stretch, we rarely return to the same dimension we were before the stretch.

We’re bigger. We’re larger. We’re firmer and stronger and more able than we were prior to the challenge that caused us to reach a little further.

3. Get a step stool

Sometimes (hopefully sooner than later) we come to realize that we’re going to need something outside ourselves to help extend our physical reach. Sometimes we need a computer, the cell phone, a shovel, a book or website or blog.

Life is messy and it sometimes requires tools and technology to help us do those things we were meant to do but can’t without the technological extension. I couldn’t touch lives the way I can without my laptop. I couldn’t extend that reach without Twitter and Facebook.

So if you can’t do it all on your own, if you can’t figure life out or how to move forward, that’s okay. Reach for the book, search a needed topic online, come back here. It’s all good. The humility it calls from us will add a level of sincerity and authenticity to your life that will make it that much richer and more worthwhile.

4. Get someone taller to help

When life crashes or just gets a little too complicated, we often need something with a heartbeat. The book won’t always do it for us. We need the hand, the smile, and ear, the hug, the shoulder, the love.

Getting help from others does not signal weakness. It signals wisdom. Henry Ford once admitted he wasn’t the smartest guy in the world. His genius, he claimed, was in surrounding himself with smarter people than he was. Not a bad way to extend our limited reach.

Final Words

Life has a funny way of humbling us, of getting us to do more than we thought we could. But when life challenges and pinches a bit, resist the temptation to feel resentment for the pain. Instead, be grateful for the growth the challenge pulled out of you, the strength it pushed into you and the insight it inspired in you.