Do You Have an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard? (Read Time: 2 min.)

I was reading Warren Buffett's biography yesterday (The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life) and came across a lightbulb quote:

"The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard... In teaching your kids, I think the lesson they're learning at a very, very early age is what their parents put the emphasis on. If all the emphasis is on what the world's going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you'll wind up with an outer scorecard."

In life, you have to know what's true for you. If your sense of self-worth is based on what you do, have, or look like, what happens when those things change? We call it a mid-life crisis, right?

And, yet, far too many of us only feel strong enough to pursue our dreams when we have a team of people cheerleading in the background. That's having an Outer Scorecard and the problem is obvious.

If you live based on your Outer Scorecard, you fall to pieces when people stop cheering. It's a brave soul who can keep moving when all seems lost, all the fans have left the building and, in their place, are people shooting, "Boo!"

Remember:

It's not what people call you that matters;

it's what you answer to that counts.

Make your private and public persona one in the same and worrying about the "good" opinions of others will be a non-issue.