By Loren Ziff | I am co-chair and co-founder of Push-Up & Up, a Charleston-based non-profit that raises money and awareness for dropout prevention. I am 54 years old, in OK but not great shape, and I can do 450 push-ups in 30 minutes – and so can you!

This is not an infomercial, but an opportunity to look in the mirror and face a challenge. It’s an opportunity to break down the artificial barriers that all of us put up.

Let’s be honest. Not too many of us wake up thinking about how many push-ups we are going to do today. However, with the Push-Up & Up training program, we have hundreds of participants in schools and businesses doing just this. We use the common, ordinary push-up as a metaphor for success through goal setting, time management and team-building.