We all have that natural desire to follow our dreams and aspirations; we all want that piece of the so-called American Dream. We wake up every day searching for ways to advance our lives. We have our setbacks, but we mostly stay the course. I wish we all busted our asses to get where we want to be in life, but lately, I find that to be less and less the case. I heard legends from back in the day about when people had to roll up their sleeves and work harder and harder each day to taste success. Nowadays, all you have to bitch and moan and complain that you deserve more than what you have currently.

I hate that mentality. I always have. Without getting too personal, I came from an extremely poor family. We survived paycheck to paycheck, and I was the product of a single parent home with two other younger siblings. To put things simply, nothing came easy. I don't look at this as a bad thing, though. I think it helped me to understand the importance of effort. To get the stuff I wanted, I busted my ass to get it. My mother was amazing in so many ways, but the biggest lesson she ever taught me was that I shouldn't depend on life handing me anything, because life is never fair. You have to hand yourself everything. That's a lesson I carry on to this day.

That being said, I currently live in the "participation trophy" era. Everybody wins and nobody can lose. I have always thought that mentality was flawed. With the everybody wins school of thought, I believe everybody loses. We can't underestimate the importance of failure. One must fail to truly know how to succeed. If we coddle ourselves, we get a sense of entitlement; the feeling that just because we put in the bare minimum of effort, we deserve the best results, because "eh, I tried."

I firmly believe you have to put in the best effort in to get the best results. You shouldn't get applause for mediocrity.

I am my own harshest critic. In college, I don't feel as if I am being challenged to put in insane amounts of effort. I feel I could scrape by with the bare minimum of effort and get a "B." In fact, in one class last year, I tested this theory out. I purposely put zero effort into a project. None at all. Guess what? It got a "B." That annoyed the hell out of me. I didn't deserve that "B." I could have only received that "B" because our generation is horrified of laying the harsh hand of failure upon those who deserve it.

We can't be so afraid of failure. We need to embrace it. Failure can sting, but that's a good thing. It's like that scene in "The Lion King," when Rafiki hits Simba on the head. Taking a swing at the head can hurt, but you can whine about it and demand it never happen again, or you can learn from it and find a way to make sure you never take a blow to the head again. If you don't stumble, you won't know how to get up and truly accomplish something. We learn more from failure than we do success. So, I must urge teachers, parents, and other humans to not be afraid to be honest, and let people know of their failures.

Entitlement is our generation's fatal flaw. The reason we in the shape we are in is because nobody can lose and everybody must win even when they don't deserve to. There is no greater feeling than giving your all to something; using your blood, sweat, and tears to achieve the dream. Being handed something may be easy on your stress levels, but it's not nearly as gratifying. Stop demanding the stuff you want and go out and make it happen. Impossible should be removed from your vocab. You are capable of anything. You just have to drive to go out and do it. You also have to welcome failure just as much as you welcome success. If we can do this as a whole, we'll be on the right path.

I'm going to leave you with this quote from Paul Heyman that rings true and should be heard by all:

"You cannot achieve success without the risk of failure. And I learned a long time ago you cannot achieve success if you fear failure. If you're not afraid to fail, man, you have a chance to succeed. But you're never gonna get there unless you risk it, all the way. Sometimes half the fun is failing; learning from your mistakes. Waking up the next morning and saying 'Okay. Watch out, here I come again. A little bit smarter. Licking my wounds and really not looking forward to not getting my ass kicked again like I did yesterday. So now, I'm just a little more dangerous.'"