In life, we must hold ourselves accountable for our own actions. Whether it be when all eyes are on you or when you are all by yourself, hold yourself to the same standard always. I believe this to be a big factor when it comes to self development and self improvement in one's life. Allow me to provide an example. Earlier in my life when I would be training in my Kickboxing sessions, whenever I got tired, I would always look for when the coach was not looking just to rest and not put in 100% effort. At the time I did not realise it to be such a bad thing. I only realised that action was bad once it started trickling down into all other aspects of my life. Whatever task I would complete, I would always just want to finish the task to say I did it, regardless of how good the effort was or not. In Kickboxing, I just wanted to make it to the end of the class to say that I did it. I was doing this because I wanted to tell others about how well I was doing and how great it was that I was doing soo many things. It wasn't until I started making many errors in my day job that it really started to hit me that I was failing as a person. I always wanted to be someone who others could look at and say "WOW look how awesome he is". This mentality is what led to the failures in my life. I was doing things to show others how great I was and doing nothing that spoke true to myself and my true beliefs. When the failures begun to pile up, I remember on a long drive home thinking to myself "Something needs to change. You can't keep acting like this". From that day onwards, no matter what I was doing, I would make sure that I held myself to a higher standard and did things for a bigger reason then to just make others happy. I wanted to be proud of myself and the previous action of not holding myself accountable and doing things for the sole purposed of showing others was the reason for my failures. Whenever I train now at the gym, if my coach is not watching me to my deadlifts and I feel tired, I won't quit and instead I will power through. I know that if I quit, I won't be proud of my actions and that will eat at my soul. I turned from someone who his actions were aimed at showing others how good he was into someone who his actions were aimed at showing himself how good he can be and what a positive impact it can have in his life. So the moral of this article is, even when no one is looking, do the best that you can. Don't do things just to please others and don't shy away when things get difficult because it will lead to a negative domino effect in your life (in my experience it did). Be your biggest critic, do what is necessary and not what is easy. Implement this mentality with consistency and watch your life begin to improve.
