No One is Watching, Who are you?

John Wooden gave a legendary quote about character:

The basis for this perspective is anyone can act like an A+ person when they know they have someone watching them. It is easy to pick up the trash you dropped when your parents are looking at you. It is easy to do all of the reps in the set when your strength coach is looking over your shoulder. It is easy to take notes when your teacher is walking you through a lesson. When the lights turn off, when the audience is not there, that is where who you really are comes out. When you are leaving your seat at an arena, do you leave your trash and make the janitors pick up your mess? Or does your character enable you to make the right decision? When your coach turned their back, do you take that rep off? Or does your character enable you to work even harder? When you are home alone, do you blow off school work in favor of tv? Or does your character enable you to study until you know the material? Who you are when you are alone with yourself is the most pure sense of the person you actually are.

I have heard Nick Bare share the following perspective multiple times. He believes a person is disorganized if he gets into a dirty car. A person’s car is generally someone’s individual responsibility to keep clean. If the seats are littered with trash, empty soda bottles, clothes from last week, and whatever else, there is a fair assumption to be made for the type of characteristics this individual possesses. When no one was watching, this type of person chose to not take care of the small details of cleaning and instead catered to being lazy.

Doing the right thing because it is “the right thing to do” is a powerful characteristic of a good person. There should be no elaborate reason why we pick up our trash after ourselves. There should be no elaborate reason why we do all of the reps at the gym. There should be no elaborate reason why we study until we know the material. We should simply do what is right. If there are tasks or activities in our lives that we need our handheld in order to do them correctly, we need to look in the mirror and become more personally accountable. We should care to be better so that we do the right thing when no one is watching. The person we are when no one is watching should be the person everyone else sees when the lights are on. We should be the same person and should be a person who acts with high character. When no one is watching is actually when the lights are brightest because it is the point where we act the most like our true selves. If we act differently with any sort of audience, we are not being true to who we really are.