In today’s society I believe we reward peoples’ mediocrity and we discourage people from striving to be amazing. All too often we want people to fit into the crowd and we don’t want people to stand out. Society is geared for us all to remain at the same level, and if people strive hard and want to be better, often they’re met with great adversity and a lot of judgment.

I want us to look at mediocrity as a disease. When you settle for mediocrity and you don’t push yourself to be the best you can in your life and you’re not doing the best thing you can do for you, your family and the people around you, then that to me is like a disease. We’re encouraging people to just stay in their comfort zone. We’re encouraging kids to not strive to win by giving them eighth place trophies. We’re creating a whole society of mediocrity where it’s rewarded.

I want us to live in a society where we’re encouraged to compete, where we’re encouraged to be our best, where we’re encouraged to push hard to be better than we were yesterday. We have become so soft as a society and I want us to change that so that our kids can live a life where any dream of theirs is possible. I went to my uncle’s funeral today and as I stood there and looked around at a man who’s lived 78 years, and I thought to myself I wonder if he would be happy with the way he lived his life. He’s a loving family man and a decent man, but I’m sure he had his regrets.

And what I would want for every one of you reading this article is to die with no regret. When you die in two years, 20 years, or 200 years, I don’t want you to live with any regret. I want you to have pushed hard and tried and failed, but failure only comes when you stop trying. I want us to be fighting forward to develop kids that are resilient, develop adults that have grit and determination, where we don’t quit and we don’t complain because somebody talked to us in the wrong way.

We’re so oversensitive and we expect everybody else to fix our problems and that’s just not leading to a great society. I think we need to look at ourselves a lot more closely and decide who we wanna be. I don’t rely on anybody else for my life. I go out and get what I want. I work every day to be the best version of me possible, and be the best man I can be, the best dad I can be, the best partner I can be.

Will you dig in and work hard and be the best person you can be in your life or will you settle for the disease of mediocrity? There’s only one cure to that disease and that is hard work. And then when you mix that hard work with some determination and some resilience, the results that you can get are amazing. But you are the only one that can get them. Ask yourself if you have the courage and the tenacity and the strength to go out in your life and be your best.