Keys To Personal Development

Personality is ‘our outer look’ i-e, how we present ourselves to the masses/audience/viewers. Just having an ample amount of knowledge won’t do much to you, it’s the way you actually present it that hits the bails. If we are bad at presenting ourselves, we can’t go much farther on our path to success. Knowing how to develop our personality is as important as studying hard to score high in exams.

So, to develop and groom our personality, we need to focus on the following components viz,

-Honesty

-Self esteem

-Self confidence

-Open-mindedness

- Communication skills

Honesty: Honesty is truth telling, truth loving and truth living. Honesty is a lifestyle embellished with being true not only to your own self but to everyone. When you actually become true to your own actual self, you become true to everyone. Honesty plays a significant part in one’s life as it makes one credible while on the personal level, by being true, we escape guilt of being wrong/sinful. People and organizations prefer honest persons over smart-cum-dishonest persons.

Why will an organization prefer an honest person because an honest person won’t shirk work, he will give his best to perform his duties, won’t harm/misappropriate the organization’s resources and will try to maintain the peaceful atmosphere. That’s how an honest person will not only be a great contributor to an organization’s progress but will also make progress for himself and will lead a satisfied life. The results of honesty may be delayed but in the end, it will surely bear sweet fruit.

Self-Esteem: What is Self-esteem? It is the realization, acknowledgement/acceptance, and love of the self-worth, the worth of one’s own abilities, one’s values, one’s own opinions. If we feel bad about ourselves after listening to criticism, it means we have low self-esteem. That’s how we disapprove of our own selves rather we need to accept ourselves as we are right now. After accepting, we should identify the loopholes of our personality, find solutions and then work towards those solutions to boost our self-esteem. High self-esteem is must-have because self-esteem is directly proportional to confidence i-e, high self-esteem equals high confidence while low self-esteem equals low confidence.

Self-Confidence: Self-Confidence equals faith in one’s own faculties/skills. Unless or until we have high self-confidence, we can make a desired leap as it is something which lets us present ourselves/our knowledge/ our views in the best possible manner and also reinforces the will to do and move further. The reasons behind low self-confidence might be lack of skill/competence, lack of self-assurance/belief.

To bust any reason behind your low self-confidence, we need to shun the things like ‘What people will say?, comparing yourself with others, overthinking about your personality pitfalls, etc. and should start firstly with acceptance of the way we are right now, identify the level of our knowledge,competence/skill, and start working towards increasing our knowledge and then practicing that knowledge in an attempt to boost our competence and keep trying until we have desired level of confidence. Also, we should start stuffing our brain with positive thoughts which will really help in bolstering our self confidence.

Open-mindedness: Open-mindedness is like the Growth-mindset i-e, being open to receiving new information positively. Open-mindedness is about getting feedback with an open heart and mind keeping in mind that it could help me improve further by letting me know the points to improve, rather than getting annoyed by the feedback/criticism.

Keep in mind everyone has a right to share his/her thoughts/beliefs, respect them by listening to them attentively, who knows in that listening an opportunity opens up for you or the insights to improve you. Always think of the room for improvement, don’t limit yourself by fixing your mind to ‘you-know-it-all’ attitude. Rather than getting disturbed, just relax when your ideas are challenged and look at what the other outlook can offer.

Communication Skills: Communication Skill is about ‘Exchange of information, about sharing’ in a way that your message can be comprehended by your audience at ease. It’s about impact, about persuasion, about help, about empathy. With fine communication skills, we can go even farther on our road to success than previously we could without fine communication skills. There are some key elements to communication skills, improving on which we could become a better communicator (which make up the basic fibre of communication skills) and those are as follows:

• Listening: We take listening for granted but it’s a genuine skill. Start listening to other people, not just listening rather actively i-e, listen to the person with full attention in complete silence, just listen to him rather than playing with your own thoughts in your mind, and wait for him to end before you could answer him. By active listening, you become credible, you gain knowledge, your empathy level may increase. People would love to talk to you.
• Conciseness: Always be concise, never start uttering a book long story. To retain the interest of the audience, conciseness must be there as you protract your discussion, people may lose interest.
• Body language: Body language is the communication without utterance of words. It’s such a powerful way of communication that we tend to express our most subtle emotions through this way. Proper body language shows our energy , our interest, confidence and our persuasive ability. There are some tips like maintain proper eye contact with the audience/listener, use proper hand gestures while talking, Don’t shake your head too much while listening as it may show you lost the interest in discussion rather proper nodding is a must have to retain the interest, avoid monotonous voice tone, proper handshake not i-e, so hard not so soft while meeting someone is also super important.
• Confidence: Speaking with confidence shows us to be more skillful and knowledgeable and makes us impressive and persuasive.
• Open-mindedness: Listen to everyone patiently, attentively and keep your mind open to new information and be accepting what is true. Be open to feedback/criticism and work on the suggestions which could improve your skills further. Don’t get disturbed and start fighting with the person with opposite views.
• Respect: Respect everyone no matter who he/she is. Always remember the saying, ‘do respect, have respect’.
• Correct medium: Use correct medium for communication like email, phone, telegram, letter, in person meeting, video call etc. Let’s take a scenario, you want to settle some dispute with your colleague or want to seek apology from him/her for some misbehaviour, you may opt for email for the said purpose. and if you want to make a business deal, it’s better to do it in a one-on-one meeting. Always use most appropriate means to communicate.

On a concluding note, if we want to be a high achiever, we need to groom our personalities which can happen by following and implementing the components discussed above for personality development. Always remember, life is a journey of constant improvement.

“ Income seldom exceeds personal development.”