By Justin Albright Posted April 16, 2014
In this day and age, it’s common for people to receive rewards for just showing up. Whatever happened to the competition? If there’s a 100 percent chance that you’ll get a reward for just showing up, why bother competing?
As the great Ricky Bobby said, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” This quote can apply to anything and everything in life. You should always strive to be first in anything, don’t be satisfied with mediocrity. Handing out awards and medals to people that don’t give maximum effort to their craft is wrong.
Giving awards to people that don’t try teaches them that a lackadaisical work ethic is satisfactory, and this is completely wrong. Handing out medals for losing is tough. Why would somebody want a constant reminder of how they lost?
Trophies are the ultimate sign of success. Receiving a trophy is the perfect award for all the hard work that you put in, so giving trophies to someone who doesn’t put in the work tells the youth that it’s fine to slack off.
What kind of life lesson is that? Life is all about putting in work to achieve success. It’s virtually impossible to be successful if you’re expecting to have everything handed to you.
Second place is just the first place loser; nobody should be satisfied with being second and if you are, you’re going to be okay with being mediocre. Don’t settle for mediocrity, strive for greatness.
Nothing worth having in life comes easy and if you carry that mindset throughout life, you will have some amount of success.
