Not everybody is going home with a trophy.

I am a Millenial. There, I said it. And as a fellow Millenial, I feel comfortable saying that one of our greatest weaknesses as a generation is the expectation of success. I could blame mom and dad for this, but that would be very Millenial of me.

I'm one of the early Millenials. I can remember life before cell phones. I played tee-ball in those pre-internet days, just like any other red-blooded American. But even then, I can recall an unusually long streak of games that ended in ties. 

I think this mentality created a generation of adults of which many are incapable of handling criticism, setbacks and outright failure. I say this because I see it in myself, too. Just today, I caught myself stalling, afraid to start writing something for Page 1 because I was afraid of being exposed, afraid of putting myself out there only to be rejected by thousands of readers. This might still happen tomorrow morning, and I'm OK with that.

I remind myself that I can't live each day as if it's the final draft of my life. There has to be room for error. There has to be the possibility -- and often the reality -- of failure. The game won't always end in a tie. Everybody won't always go home with a trophy. But everybody walks off the field better than when they walked on, just for having played.