What Do You Do When No One’s Watching? A Short Lesson on Character

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one’s watching.” — Coach John Wooden

As much as life’s success is about being proactive and creating opportunities, it’s equally about eliminating mistakes. This is true in the world of sports, business, art and in how we handle our everyday affairs.

Ingenuity and creativity will spur us on to a lifetime of freedom and happiness. They will give us the liberty to explore our humanity and to give life to new opportunities. We should always explore ways to expand our imaginations and learn new things. Any effort that we have everyday to grow personally and professionally, we should take advantage of and pursue.

Likewise, we should be shrewd in determining ways to not hide our weaknesses, but remedy them. In the personal development time that we should all allocate to our days and weeks, it’s how we determine to spend this time that will go a long way toward how we build our character.

Self-examination, coupled with constructive feedback from others, will give us the tools that we need to analyze and figure out what things we need to fix. What are the “turnovers” of life that we’ve committed that we must correct in order to get better and reach our potential? What things are we doing poorly or not well, that we need to get rid of or improve?

It’s not just about our output. It’s about reducing bad output to have a better overall final score.

A Story to Tell

Coach John Wooden famously taught all of his players how to put their socks and shoes on at the beginning of every basketball season. This was at UCLA, a school that was winning the college basketball national championship nearly every season! First off, Wooden understood that the fundamentals of the game were so important. Why not start at the very basic level?

But even more pertinent, he was trying to give them every advantage that he could. He was attempting to reduce their mistakes. The silly, often overlooked turnovers that can detract from our overall performance.

Think about it — you may deliver a fantastic presentation at work.

But what if you follow that presentation by not preparing for the next assignment that comes your way? And the next time — your effort is poor? All of a sudden, after raising the bar high, you’ve lowered things back down and created inconsistency. That trust and praise you earned all of a sudden needs to be weighed against a bad performance, one where your boss may start to question your whole package of output.

You may write an excellent article.

But what if you don’t begin again? Or when you do, what if you don’t put your best effort into it, thinking you can simply skate by on past performance?

You may ace one of your exams.

But if you don’t study for the next one, or if you do a rush-job of cramming at the last minute and get a D, then what? You “turned the ball over” and you’re back at average.

Your character and your ability to apply yourself with consistency are inextricably linked. Great leaders and performers are consistently great. This begins with a positive, growth mindset and is backed-up by a hard, intelligent work ethic. It’s not a sometimes thing. It’s an ALL the time thing.

It happens in the workplace. It happens at home. It’s an all the time thing when you’re dealing with friends or in public at events. And perhaps most significantly, it’s the way you behave and act when you’re the only one who’s watching. That person you look at in the mirror. They’re going to want to know whether you held yourself accountable and to a higher standard of conduct and performance.

When you can honestly and truthfully say that you’ve done your best, that you’ve given your all, and that you’ve consciously made the effort to eliminate the negatives that hold you back, you’ll know you’re on the journey to greatness.

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What Do You Do When No One’s Watching? A Short Lesson on Character was originally published in The Ascent on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.