Personality comprises understanding self, fixing one’s goals, physical and mental health and various other facets of the person as seen by himself/herself and as seen by others. Indeed, understanding personality is not easy. But it is extremely important. It is important for your success. More importantly it helps you to achieve happiness.
1.Understanding Self
Our first step should be that we sit down and contemplate about
life’s significance in case we haven’t done so. It’s a kind of vision statement
with which one must clarify to himself/herself what they want to do. The act of
contemplation on significance your life will always help you to adopt and
maintain a proper prospective.
2. Specifying Your Goals
By and large everyone has wishes. But these are not specific desires. Wishes
become desire only when you specify your goals. Wishes do not allow you to
focus and take actions needed for achievements. These wishes often times remain
wishes. Further, unrealized wishes erode self-esteem. It is imperative,
therefore, to write down clearly each of your goals in respect of various
aspects of life. Goals would state the time frame.These should also clarify how
you plan to achieve. Its only when you make a practical plan that you can
pursue your goals effectively.
3. Physical and Mental Health
First on the list of your goals should be good health. One can achieve
physically good health by taking care of food, exercise and sleep. Human body
is made to last for about 100 years. So we need to use all the faculties with
discretion. We must not over use, under-use, but strike a good balance and keep
on becoming more effective. Mental health is even more important. It refers to
your thoughts, your behavior and your attitude towards others. It also refers to
your attitude towards life.
4. Application of Mind
Application of mind enables you to analyze any situation. It enables you to
review your performance even in challenges. In fact, human sufferings impart
great life’s lessons. One should be willing to learn these lessons. Knowledge
acquired through reading books, attending training programs and interacting
others play an important role. One should never be judgmental. However it’s
necessary to apply mind and to form opinions about anything that concerns us.
This process helps us to become more decisive to pursue our goals.
5. Courage & Kindness
I remember the story
of the movie ‘Cinderella’. It’s a movie made about 50 years ago. Yet I find it
fresh and captivating. An oft repeated children fairy tale enthralls everyone,
the little children as well as the senior citizens. Cinderella’s inherent
kindness with courage to withstand adversity brought for her fortunes.
Kindness indeed is a virtue which however small in action never goes waste. It
enhances self-esteem, but more importantly, kindness brings happiness. In our
morning walkers’ club, often the subject of how to improve the morals in the
society is discussed. Though India is known for its tolerance & kindness,
yet today it is felt that citizens show scant respect for others.
Everyone complains about the conduct of our people. Undoubtedly with the
uncanny behavior no one has anything to gain but a lot to lose.
Courage is another aspect of personality which helps you to have a positive
attitude. Someone wrote, ‘life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s
courage’. How true! A person who lacks courage can hardly live life. They just
exist, like other living beings. Life comprises a series of events. Some are to
our liking. Others are not so good and certain others very disturbing. The
Bhagvad Gita teaches us that all such events good or bad have to be borne by
each individual with a calm mind. If you have courage, you may face these
without fear. But if you lack courage there could be some horrifying
experiences even though the events remain the same.
One may belong to any religion, they usually pray before any dire encounter.
Prayer has a certain power. In fact courage is not the absence of fear. Human
beings when faced with an unexpected untoward situation are bound to face fear.
When you decide to embark upon a challenging situation, you are fully aware of
the danger involved. You may be struck with fear but you still go ahead. It
only means that you have conquered that fear. Courage is not absence of fear.
Courage is nothing but conquering the fear.
Great success can be achieved by someone who adds perseverance to courage and
kindness. When you do that even the most difficult tasks can be completed with
ease. In fact lives of all great men clearly illustrate that they had courage,
were always kind, and they allpersevered.
6. Good Communication
Skills are Critical
We all communicate verbally right from the time we are able to speak. In fact
babies start communicating immediately after birth. As we grow the social
considerations keep on shaping our communication skills. Besides, the influence
of people around, parents, teachers, friends and others we meet also create an
impact. We can develop and maintain good communication skills only with regular
review of our ability regarding communications
7. Effective Speaking:
First of all it is necessary to have strong content. Content is the king.
Effective communications take this into account more than any other aspect of
life. Content means domain knowledge. You can’t fool people with shallow
thoughts. Much less you can impress them. Lot of hard work goes into acquiring
knowledge. The biggest problem is seen when you have worthwhile knowledge but
you can’t use into your advantage due to lack of effective speech. Your
expression remains impaired. People would barely know that you are a storehouse
of useful information.
Then what should you do? Become a good speaker. Practice the art and science of
speaking clearly, confidently and convincingly.
How do you speak clearly? You must understand that speech in the result of
decision to communicate. First thinking clarifies the idea you want to project
to the listener or a group of listeners. Then brain sends a signal to the lungs
and some breath is released. Breath strikes the vocal cord to produce sound.
But the words are created by the speech organs. So in order to speak clearly,
think clearly. Cultivate habit of deep breathing. It enables to have sufficient
breath to support strength of your voice. This will also enable you to speak
longer sentence without breathing in between. The flow of speech will enable
ideas to flow smoothly.
8. Active listening:
Communication does not mean only effective speaking. In fact, it is the beginning point.
But even more
important is active listening. Active listening will bring about the results
that you are looking for. You communicate with someone or a group of listeners
with an objective. How can you influence others? You can do so by listening to
them actively and with your speech. How do you find whether you are a good
listener or not? I give below a checklist which is self- expletory.
Checklist:
i) Don’t think of what you are going to say next when another person is speaking. Just focus on understanding and assimilating what he/she has to say.
ii) You must listen with an open mind. Don’t try to relate with your own experience, similar experience. When someone is relating a story in support of his argument, your tendency to evaluate should be given a pause. Never be judgmental, as they say.
iii) When you are listening, try to recreate mentally what the other person is saying objectively.
iv) Try to see things from the speaker’s point of view. Empathize and be compassionate while listening.
v) Try to uncover the intent of the speaker. All speakers may not be terse. Their verbosity may require a little extra effort on your part to understand the intent. Make this extra effort.
vi) Think what results you can produce through listening rather than speaking. If you want to influence people, you will be amazed to observe how listening comes in handy and helpful.
vii) Listen a minute longer than it is comfortable. That extra minute will give you extra input. In any case, you are having a dialogue for understanding the other’s point of view.
viii) Last but not the least; you must remember that your words of advice will be seen as unwanted noise. Never give an advice unless asked for. If you are not convinced and the solution demands that you must express your views, do that and say we agree to disagree!
9. Poise:
The Dictionary meaning of Poise is composure or self-possession or equilibrium.
Thus a poised person is self-assured and carries himself/herself gracefully and with dignity. For human beings the difficulty arises due to our emotions. If anything is not happening as per the expectation, the individual is likely to react in a way which is often irrational. It’s difficult to maintain poise. But with continuous practice, you can surely achieve. However, the benefits are immense. A poised person is able to deal with all kinds of people calmly and elegantly.
How to maintain poise? Psychologists after research have come to certain conclusions, which I would like to reproduce below:
The biggest enemy of poise is anger. Everyone would agree that anger is not beneficial to the individual under any circumstances. A person gets angry due to uncomfortable situations due to uncomfortable situations or due to his/her own inadequacies to meet the situations. One may also get angry if someone insults or speaks in a manner which is unworthy. But with practice one can meet all challenges. They can remain cool in all circumstances but this will happen with consistent efforts and self-awareness.
You should laugh with others even if joke is on you. Any sarcastic remarks can easily be laughed away. Apply mind to come out with the solution. This will happen if you take things in their stride.
Life is mixture of highs and lows. Good things are followed by challenges just like night falls after day the life does not offer a regular cycle like night and day. But both difficulties and happy moments are a part of everybody’s’ life. We need to be appreciated. Keep your spirit up even when things go wrong.
Ego is another enemy of poise. Unfortunately this malady is wide spread. It is found in most well-to-do people. Realizing that ego does not serve any purpose we should throw it out from our life.
10.Happiness:
In the dictionary, there is no proper definition for happiness. One has to find out his own definition which works for him/her. In simple words, it is a constant and continuous feeling of joy and contentment. It should not be momentary. Pleasures are momentary.
Whatever a person does, they ultimately do to find happiness. It is not a destination, but can be found in the journey of life. It is one’s choice to be happy. Whether one has everything or not, it is completely his choice to make himself happy with what he has. It is not a possession to be prized, but the quality of thoughts and state of mind. It is a sort of action. When one is wise, he makes others happy.
Some of the authors and other wise people say that today, the biggest problem in the world is that we are more interested in making others believe that we are happy than actually trying to be happy by the same resources.
It is just a belief that money and success can buy happiness. But on their own, these are deficient. Your decision to be happy plays the top role. Money, success, your decision, etc. are just few of the constituents of happiness, which are to be placed on their proper positions.
Happiness can’t be bought, but just created, felt, expressed or experienced. If it could have been bought, all would have paid a price for it. The best method to create happiness is to do the things which you love. It contributes a lot. And if that is not possible, then love the things which you
Thanks for reading!
