Last month, if you've been following along, and if not, we'll give you the link, we talked about acceleration, which was about how we get more and more momentum pouring forth in our lives. I wanted to share a story about a speaker that I heard a number of years ago. This is psycho-spiritual development, the kind of stuff about trying to grow our insides so our outsides become bigger and bigger as it manifests through us.

I remember very clearly, because it really made sense to me, the speaker said when you first get started, you're trying to get out of something that's bad and get into something that's good. And then if you persist, good becomes better. And if you continue to persist, better becomes better and better.

Of course, if you follow continuous quality improvement, the various ways that we do developmental improvements with things, you know that this is true. There's this thing that happens where the results, the fruit we bear, the lives we live, the things that happen in and through us, they get better and better and better. You might even think of it as an upward spiral, that there's a spiraling effect that comes as a result of this continuous process.

At some point in time, the phrase we might use is that we come to the place where we're living fully. Why does that matter? Well, if you look at the developmental research, here's what we know. A lot of us don't ever get to living fully.

We don't stay on this spiraling effect or the momentum effect. And yet, when we see it across a lifetime, you've had this experience, I know, where you've spoken sometime to someone who's like 92 years old, and they are sharp, and they're warm, and they're engaging, and you just say to yourself, wow, I want to be like them. Well, that's living fully over a lifetime.

It's cumulative. It adds up over time. But it doesn't happen that way unless we continue to push ourselves along.

That's the big piece of the research. We know that with each passing year, it becomes more difficult for us to push ourselves a little further. And yet, it is that pushing ourselves a little further, a little more than we thought we could, year after year after year, that brings us to this place of living fully.

If you are like me, and want to be that person who at 92 is still thriving, and growing, and warm, and intriguing, and all those sorts of things, just know that it's a work in progress. I sometimes say, if it is your life's work, it is going to take your life. And you know, that may be true of all of us for this entire path towards life fulfillment.

Maslow called it self-actualization. That's a pretty cool concept.