What do you do when no one is watching?

You are walking along the street on a nice evening. A stranger rushes past in front of you with a couple of books in their hand and unwittingly drops their hand-kerchief.

What do you do?

The answer feels simple.

The nice thing to do is to pick up the kerchief and tell them they dropped it while walking past you.

There could a couple of reasons for you to do it though.

Such as:

• You want to help them out.

• You want to feel nicer about the day.

• You want to look good in front of people.

• You want to start a convo with the person.

• You saw someone else watching you so you wanted to do the right thing.

And so on.

This is an example of a low stake, low energy investment and external (social) thing that you can do without giving a second thought.

You would help out anyone when there are societal eyes on you or if you want to feel good about yourself when the stakes are low.

But I think, who you are as a person, an individual, can only and only be determined by what you do when no one is watching.

Why?

Because there are no eyes on you. Nobody’s watching. Even if you don’t do the “right” thing, no one would make you feel bad about it.

And I think that’s where most of us are wrong.

There is always a pair of eyes watching you at all times and observing all the things you do and don’t do, and as you might have guessed it, it’s YOU.

Who are you when no one’s watching?

What do you do with your time? Who do you help with it? Is it useful? Do you take care of yourself or fall into the loop of slowly poisoning yourself by indulging in things you know you shouldn’t? Do you keep the promises you made to yourself? To others? Are you working towards the life you want or are you creating excuses and reasons as to why you are not where you want to be?

These are things I think I should continue asking myself in order to course correct myself when I fall into chaos.

I think us human beings are so focused on how other people perceive us that we fail to see how we perceive ourselves.

I know for a fact that what you do when nobody’s watching is one of the key indicators of where and how you will be in life.

Because that dictates every aspect of your life from finance, health, relationships, goals etc.

A good exercise would be to notice what you do when you have free time in your hands and what you do with it when no one is watching. And keep doing it.

Best,

Kapil.