Be True To Yourself | Coach Wooden

All credit of this article goes to Pat Williams and his book, Coach Wooden.  He breaks down Coach Wooden’s seven-point creed that was given to him by his father when he graduated from elementary school.  Many attribute a large part of his success to this creed and his ability to live it out daily.

The first creed is ‘Be True To Yourself.’  Below is quotes and passages from that first chapter.

Key Points
- Be the person you were born to be.
- Be true to your highest values and principles, and you will never be false to anyone.
- The secret to the magnetism of John Wooden’s personality is that he is always at peace with himself.

Once when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, known at the time as Lew Alcindor, sat at a restaurant with Coach Wooden heard someone a few tables away whisper loudly, “Look at that black freak!”

Coach Wooden saw that his star player was wounded to tears by the comment.  “Lewis,” he said, “people hate what they don’t know – and what they are afraid of.  But don’t ever stop being yourself.

Joshua Hugh Wooden’s first life principle is this: Be true to yourself.  In Coach’s’ own commentary on his father’s seven-point creed, he wrote, “I believe it is the first point in Dad’s creed for a reason.  You must know who you are and be true to who you are if you are going to be who you can and should become.

“You must have the courage to be yourself.”

What does it mean to be true to yourself?  This is not a command to be selfish or self-absorbed.  It’s a command to be faithful to your highest self, to your values, your honor, your integrity, the reputation you wish to maintain.  Be faithful to your commitment to be a person of character, courage, commitment, devotion, perseverance, and diligence.  Refuse to compromise yourself.  Never sacrifice your principles.  Refuse to betray your values.  If you remain true to the best that is within you, you will never be false or disloyal to any other person.

“To be true to yourself means having integrity,” Frank Arnold, a former assistant coach to Coach Wooden, once said.  “It means doing the right thing even when no one is looking.”

“Be true to yourself.”  Be alert to the impulses and temptations that would undermine your character and destroy your reputation.  If you are tempted alcohol or drugs or pornography or the temptation to cut ethical corners, don’t do it.   Don’t deceive yourself into thinking it won’t harm you.  Don’t compromise your integrity.  Don’t put your reputation at risk. 

Be true to your highest values and principles, and you will never be false to anyone.

One aspect of being true to yourself is to be yourself.  In other words, be the person you were born to be.

To be true to yourself, you must be the best you can be.  Coach Wooden once wrote, “In those early days, Dad’s message about basketball – and life – was this: ‘Johnny, don’t try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be.  You have control over that.  The other you don’t. 

It was simple advice: work hard, very hard, at those things I can control and don’t lose sleep over the rest of it.”

Ralph Dollinger played on the great UCLA basketball teams of the early 1970’s.  “Coach always instated that we concentrated on our own behavior,” he told me, “because that’s what we can control.  He didn’t want us to focus on what the other teams might do.  He almost never showed us any scouting reports on our opponents.  We needed to be ourselves and play our game.  If we did that, we would control the game.  That’s what he taught us, and it worked out just as he said.”

Dustin Kearns is an assistant coach at Santa Clara University.  He said, “Coach Wooden gave me the seven-point creed and I carry it in my wallet every day.  When I think of John Wooden’s years at UCLA, I don’t think of the ten NCAA titles.  I think of the kind of person Coach was.  I know this for sure:

If players respect their coach as a person who never compromises his values and principles, those players will believe in him as a leader.  They’ll follow him anywhere.

When my teammates and I played at UCLA, we didn’t hear Coach talk about his father’s creed.  If he had talked about the creed, it wouldn’t have made any impact on me as a nineteen-year old student athlete.  To me, those seven principles would have sound trite and meaningless.  No, Coach never talked about the seven-point creed around us.  He didn’t need to.  He lived that creed.  He was that creed.  And because he was, his players got those principles from him without even realizing it.  When you truly live your creed, you don’t have to talk about it.

John Wooden had his own set of priorities, and he refused to compromise them.  As a result, he was completely comfortable with himself.

Success is a state of mind.

“Coach Wooden had a definition of success that began with six words: ‘Success is a state of mind.’  Those six words say a lot.  Most people struggle internally because they are never satisfied.  Even people with enormous success, with all the fame and wealth a person could ever want, are often restless and dissatisfied with their lives.  The thing that strikes you about John Wooden is that he is always at peace with himself.  That is the secret to the magnetism of his personality.  If you have hat peace, it will unlock so many things in your life.”

Playwright Neil Simon once gave a commencement address with the theme of being true to yourself.  He said, “Don’t listen to those who say, ‘It’s not done that way.’  Maybe it’s not, but maybe you will.  Don’t listen to those who say, ‘You’re taking too big of a chance.’  Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today.  Most importantly, don’t listen when the little voice of fear inside of you rears its ugly head and says, ‘They’re all smarter than you out there.  They’re more talented, they’re taller, blonder, prettier, luckier and have connections ...’ I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you … the chances are you’ll be a person worth of your own respect.”

Don’t be too concerned about what others may think of you.  Be very concerned about what you think of yourself. – Wooden

Jay Carty, a former graduate assistant at UCLA says, “Coach’s philosophy was never to settle for less than 100 percent.  He didn’t obsess over wins and losses, but he always wanted you to ask yourself, ‘Did I give my maximum effort?  Did I do the very best that I was capable of doing?  And if not, why not?

“The seven-point creed comes right back to John Wooden’s philosophy of being the best you are capable of being.  You must be consistent on a daily basis.  You can’t take days off.  Be the best you can be day after day, and ultimately you will be the best, period.” – Bill Bennet

“You have to live with choices.  You have to live with your responses to temptations.  You have to live with how you treat people.  That is all part of being true to yourself.” – Jamaal Wilkes

We may say, “I’m confused.  I don’t know what do.”  But that’s seldom true.  We know exactly what we should do, but we don’t want to do it.  So we look for an escape hatch, a back door, a way out.  We go to our friends and ask for their advice, hoping they will give us the answer we want to hear, not the answer we know to be true.

Be true to yourself- to your highest self, your values, your character, your honor, and your integrity.  Be true to yourself, and you’ll never be false to anyone else.