When you decide to settle for life's handouts, you make a definite and earnest decision to avoid the strain of being your best self. It is at this point that you decide to live life on a flat plain or to live horizontally. The problem is, you were not created to live life this way. At birth, you entered the race of life. Life's instruction manual says, "Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

Here are three critical truths that will help you run life's race and be content with your effort. Number one, you only have two competitors in this race, death, and your body. Throughout your entire life, you will have to fight against your body's inclination to take the easy way out of every challenge. Again, life's instruction manual says, "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receive the prize? Run in such a way that you obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things, (which is to be self-disciplined). Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore, I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have instructed others, I myself should become disqualified." Therefore, according to life's instruction manual, death is an inescapable appointment. You are here on earth but a few days, so you must get your mission accomplished.

Secondly, you can only get out of life what you put into life. You must fuel your mind and our body with the proper octane for the race that you are running. Not only are you running a race, but life is meant to be lived as a vertical ascent going from one level to the next. You are running uphill. You are constantly moving upward in life. Every day on earth is a day to gain more so that you will be able to give more of yourself.

Third, we all get further in life, and gain more from life, once we evolve as humanitarians. It is always easier to climb when the person in front of you offers a hand to help you reach the next level on the mountain. As you receive help, turn and offer the same hand to those who are below you. We are not here to compete with one another, we are all running in this race against time and selfishness, and we can all get further together than we can apart.

"Every Hand Up" is a movement that urges you to start living to be your best self. To stop settling for handouts, and to stop measuring yourself against your neighbor's life. You must focus on giving your best efforts to everything that you do in life, and stop settling for the easy way out, no matter what you are facing. It is a movement that urges you to be your best, because life is about redepositing into it, all that you have gotten out of it. You cannot take any earthly treasure to the other side of the grave therefore, it is a waste if our treasures are buried. As we go up the ladder in life, we pull a long line of fellow climbers up behind us.