An Organized Approach to Personality Development

What do you think the word ‘Personality’ refers to? A person’s clothes, hairstyle and shoes or the way they think about themselves and others?

The layman’s understanding of Personality is based on superficial aspects (like the physical attributes of height and weight) but only focusing on these aspects will not really improve a person’s personality. An accurate understanding of the word can be established when one gives equal focus to a person’s qualities and habits as well as physical appearance.

So, if your aim is personality development, you will need to pay attention to your real qualities and habits which are the foundation stones of your personality. After all, you don’t just want to impress a person who meets you for five minutes; you want to impress the ones who know you for years and years.

The superficial aspects of your personality are just that—Superficial. Though they are important too, they are only the icing on the cake. Here are some tips on personality development:

Tips on Personality Development – #1: Know Thyself!

The first challenge that most of us face when it comes to any sort of self development is lack of self-knowledge or self-awareness. Most of us are experts when it comes to talking about other people around us but might be blank when it comes to knowing ourselves.

No actual personality development can be achieved without focusing on self awareness since you need to know what you’ll be working with.

Read more on self awareness in our post what is self  awareness

Make a list of your qualities and personality traits. You don’t need to do this in a day; spend some time in self-reflection and make a note of your qualities and traits as honestly as possible.

Don’t take feedback from other people for this. This should be done independently. Note your strengths as well as your weaknesses and highlight the weaknesses you want to overcome. It is important to keep your ego at bay when listing your strengths and avoid justifying your weaknesses or giving excuses for their existence.

Tips on Personality Development – #2: Make Good Better

Once you have the data you’ll be working with, the entire process of personality development will become an organized exercise. Stick this list somewhere in your room where you get to see it everyday.

This will serve as a daily reminder of your strengths and will make you feel confident and good about yourself effortlessly. This way, you will be able to reflect your strengths in everything you undertake since you will remember them consciously.

Many times, we don’t reflect our own good qualities because we are not sure about them or don’t even remember possessing them. This weakens our strengths over a period of time and we might even end up losing them. Just like we manage our financial assets and don’t forget about their existence, we must manage and utilize our positive attributes as well so they remain with us and grow stronger over time.

Tips on Personality Development – #3: Get Rid of the Junk

The other area you’ll need to focus on is your opportunity areas. Acknowledging an opportunity area in our personality is a crucial first step in the right direction. This is where egoistic people fare poorly.

Egoistic people justify their negative traits instead of working towards removing them. So, if you’ve acknowledged one or several opportunity areas in yourself, give yourself a pat on the back simply for doing that much. Probe within and find the source of that personality trait. Did you get it through the imitation of a role model during your growing up days or did it develop as a result of some negative experience or thought process?

Certain negative traits simply become a part of our personality due to low self-esteem or unfulfilled desires. Make a commitment to overcome the negative trait and visualize yourself acting out the quality you want to possess in place of the negative trait.

Whenever you see yourself demonstrating the negative trait, stop and check yourself immediately. Doing this a few times will slowly but surely help you overcome the negative trait. Replace that trait with a desirable trait and see yourself glow with pride over your achievement.

An Organized Approach to Personality Development

Ravisha was a regular middle class girl who had never been too academically inclined during her student years. When she grew up, she realized the importance of possessing general awareness and intelligence. Her work and domestic responsibilities, however, didn’t allow her any time to fulfill this desire.

She felt inferior in comparison to intelligent people but she didn’t do anything to overcome this opportunity area since she had her hands full with other responsibilities. Finally, one day, she decided to take charge. She reduced her sleep hours from 8 to 7 per day and made newspaper reading a daily practice.

She also started to surf the internet and acquire general knowledge in an organized manner by writing questions and searching their answers using the internet. This simple change in daily routine gave her immense satisfaction since she was able to work on a weakness that used to constantly bother her inside. Not only did this boost her self-confidence, it also made her sharp and intelligent.

Conclusion

Bringing about a solid development in your personality is an activity you can reap rich dividends from. As with any other area of life, an organized approach to personality development works best.

Identify your strengths and opportunity areas genuinely so you strengthen the good while working towards improving upon the opportunity areas. This will make you confident, increase your self-esteem and make you a person you would want to spend time with.