Yes, pulling the world up is how it’s supposed to work 
You mentioned elsewhere that you prefer to work always at 1:1 scale; that’s fine, but after a bit of getting used to, then you could also consider changing the scale more fluidly. For example, if you do some design that involves using push/pull from the ground up, it probably means that you’re designing things that are at least 1-2 meters large. In your situation, what I would do is reduce the scale instead of pulling the ground up—the ground becomes reachable as well by the change in scale, and it is easier to design things on a 2-meters block if the block is first reduced to 50 centimeters.
Of course, it all depends on the kind of models you’re usually dealing with. In the architecture space, you are often designing at the house scale, so such an approach is really needed. It might be different in other domains, though.