Self-evaluation has always been a part of my life. I’ve been given many opportunities in this life and self-evaluation gives me a chance to decide if I should’ve been given any/all of those opportunities in the first place.

To possibly be allowed those opportunities, I’ve had to be judged and evaluated, via interviews, and performance observations by many who were helping me be better at what I was doing. I’ve been interviewed for teaching positions, coaching positions, and numerous summer jobs which have hopefully dispelled the rumor that teachers only work ten months and beach the other two.

I once sat across from three professors who questioned me as the final oral exam for my Master’s Degree, and I had to earn my way onto the baseball field as an umpire through test and performance observations. So evaluation is nothing new to me.

For nearly 43 years, in my mind, I’ve needed to be evaluated by my bride Sally, but she refuses to judge me. I can say she’s been kind and has given me much room to make mistakes, and allowed me many more chances to improve than I probably should’ve received.

On the day I was married, I also welcomed the opportunity to be a guardian (not a Cleveland Guardian), a provider, protector, advisor, and parent to two little girls, who are now wonderful women, wives, and mothers, one a grandmother, and later a son, who has grown to be a server and protector of many he doesn’t even know, and has become a great husband and father himself. I had to use some fancy footwork to be able to handle that opportunity, and I’m constantly self-evaluating my parenting, which I’m proud to have undertaken, fully knowing self-evaluation as a parent will go on until my days are done.

As much as I’ve been interviewed and evaluated by many, the three biggest people I’ve had to answer to in my life, my biggest evaluators, my biggest critics, are “me,” “myself,” and “I.” They’re the toughest panel of judges/evaluators sitting across from me at any/every table, and the three people I have to answer to most in my life.

Through all the situations and opportunities I’ve been given, I’ve always self-evaluated. Almost daily, I’ve asked myself in the mirror, did I do the job for which I was assigned, and did I do it as well as I could have? Did I make a difference those with whom I worked, in the abilities and outlook of those in my charge? Did I make the experience in which we were together something that could be used in their lives and not just in the arena in which we were together? Did those I had to discipline understand why I did what I had to do, in the manner in which I did it? All that was/is part of my self-evaluation.

I recently heard a line in a TV show I enjoy watching which was, “If you believe them when they say you’re great, you have to believe them when they say you stink.” Another line from the same show, different episode, said, “Just because you could doesn’t always mean you should.”

When I began writing for the Post Journal, and through books I’ve had published, I have had many evaluators and critics, those being all who’ve read what I’ve written. As much as many have sent me kind and wonderful reviews on my writings, making me feel great, “me” often wonders if I can’t do what I do better.

And, as much as many have stopped means told me how much they relate to my writings, “myself” still wonders how many others think it stinks, and how I can maybe change that. And as much as I appreciate accolades that come my way, “I” still wonder if it really makes a positive difference for some. That goes for everything I undertake. I question me, myself, and I, then I have to answer to them.

I had a college professor, whose office I once went to a few days after finding out I correctly answered 71 out of 73 questions on a recent test. (My wanting to talk to him had nothing to do with that test.) When I entered his office, he told me I must be there to discuss my test score. When I told him I was okay with my test score, he said I must’ve gotten all 73 correct, otherwise I shouldn’t be happy with my score. From that point on I began shooting for perfection lest becoming complacent and losing motivation to do better. I’ve since found a “food for thought” saying which reads, “Strive for perfection to reach excellence.” So that’s what I try to do, and as far as, “Just because you could” goes, we definitely should, to try and make ourselves the best we can be.

Yes, self-evaluation is necessary, because it makes us better.