Good morning, folks I haven’t done one of these videos in a really long time. I want to expand on something I was listening to on the radio earlier. It was a child psychologist that runs one of the clinics here in Louisville and he was talking about how we coddle our kids and how that affects them in later life.

When they are small folks worry, they are afraid the kid is going to fall and get hurt. Well that is a natural response as a parent but then they start getting into grade school some parents are so fixated on worry about them failing in grade school they do everything they can to not let them fail. To shield them from it. In some schools they have gone as far as eliminating bad grades.

And it goes on to sports where no one keeps score. Then middle school and high school. Some parents are so adamant that it’s not their kid getting the bad grade. Demanding something be done to change that grade because my kid won’t get into college.

Failures are not allowed. We are taught that we are not allowed to fail. You can’t fail. You have to succeed at all costs.

That’s the message we keep giving and we coddle them. We don’t let them fail. They don’t learn to fail.

Then you wonder why, when they grow up they act the way they do. That they are entitled to success. Entitled to get what they want and if they don’t get it then it is not fair.

Failure is part of success.

One can’t have success without failure.

Failure is where you learn what to do and what not to do. If you never learn what to do and what not to do, you’re never going to have success in life as an adult and I think that is what’s a big problem now.

Everybody expects a trophy for everything. Whether you achieve that trophy or not, you get a trophy. That is the attitude of so many.

You know what?

That’s not the way life is. If you think that’s the way life is, then life’s going to kick your butt.

You know there are so many people now that feel entitled. That feel like they deserve it just because they breathe.

It comes to mind once when I built my house. We had a friend of ours come and see our house after we built it. I mean, I put myself through college. I worked lots of hour overtime for years to get debt free. We did without and pinched and scraped and worked 80 hours per week and even went as far as to provide our own labor to build that dream home. We were proud of what we accomplished. And one of our best friends first words when seeing what we accomplished were it’s not fair. I should have that.

I felt so much like telling them, “You know what. If you want this, then you got to decide to do something to achieve it. You know you can’t just sit back and hope life’s going to be fair and give you something just because you feel like you deserve it.”

You’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to work for it. You have to work hard. You have to take a chance. You have to take risks.

If you don’t take risks, you’re never going to accomplish anything in life. If you don’t take risks and really try, and expect to fail along the way, you’re never going to have that success and there’s nothing more satisfying than working your ass off for something; Getting knocked down a bazillion times; Getting back up and then winning!

That’s the most fulfilling thing that you can experience. It’s the most satisfying feeling inside, to know that you did it. You pulled up your bootstraps. You did what it took to do it. You sacrificed. You worked hard. You fell down. You got up and kept going and then you did it.

You know, I’ve been feeling sorry for myself lately because of a challenge that I am facing right now. I fell into the it’s not fair trap. Folks it’s easy to do. But I realize it’s a stupid thing. It’s time for me to get up and pull up my bootstraps and get on it.

Folks the world’s not going to hand you everything on a silver platter. You have to earn it.

You have to take those risks.

You’ve got to fall down.

You have got to fall down a bazillion times and you have got to get up. You have to dust your knees off and you got to keep moving.

I see that with my grandson all the time. He is rambunctious. He’s always on the move and he’s willing to take little risks.

I see him fall down all the time. Sometimes he might start to cry but he catches himself. He dusts himself off and then he keeps on moving. He doesn’t let that fall bother him. Even if you can tell it hurt, he ignores it and keeps going. Many a time I have asked him after falling and I can tell it hurt, I will ask, “Are you ok?”

He responds, sometimes with a tear in his eye, “I’m fine.” then he keeps going.

That’s the way you have got to be in life. That’s the attitude that Muhammad Ali, arguably the greatest boxer of all time, that is the attitude he had. He was going to win at all costs. He didn’t cheat. He didn’t expect people to give it to him. He knew he had to do the work that it took, and he did the work. He spent hours and hours in the gym.

Michael Jordan spent hours on the court shooting those baskets.

Some of the best baseball players that there are or ever were, they fail more than they succeed. If you if you’re a 300 batter in baseball that means 30 percent of the time you were successful at getting a hit. Seventy percent of the time you strike out. You failed. If you’re a 300 batter, you successfully hit that ball thirty percent of the time then you are a success and you are going to get paid millions of dollars in the big leagues.

You just have to remember that you have got to not quit. You have to not quit. You have to be willing to fail and failure is the only way to have success.

That’s my message for today. If you want to have success you have to be willing to fail. You have to quit expecting the world to give you everything on a silver platter.

Folks we are not entitled to anything. The only thing that you’re entitled to is the freedoms that are your God-given freedoms. But those freedoms don’t entitle you to success.

One is the pursuit of happiness. It’s not the guarantee of happiness. We have the right to pursue happiness. I just wish more people would learn that lesson. This country could be so much greater if people would realize that it’s not that they’re entitled to have all these things. It’s not that they’re entitled to have what the guy next door, the guy down the street or the guy across town has.

It’s not that it’s not fair that you don’t have what they have. It’s none of that.

It’s all about getting up every day. Pulling up your pants. Taking a risk. falling down, getting up, wash, rinse and repeat. That’s what life is all about. Keep trying. Learn from your failures. Keep trying and learn from the mistakes. Not just you’re mistakes but also from the mistakes of folks that have gone before you. Keep trying.

If you don’t get up and try you’re never going to succeed and life doesn’t owe you anything.