What is Personality?

Before talking about how to develop or improve your personality, let’s have a rough understanding of what personality is.

According to the American Psychological Association, personality is the differences in individual characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Some people consider personality as the outward appearance of a person. Some people tend to see a good looking person as a person with a good personality. But that is completely wrong.

Appearance is only one aspect of personality. I will mention many other elements that go into personality. This includes intelligence, ideas and ideologies, how to talk, how to walk, how to associate with people, how to solve problems, how to be a relationship builder, how to manage time, financial status, social status etc.

Types of Personality

Personality traits are divided into different categories based on different criteria. Among them, “Big Five Personality Traits” take a major place.

01. Openness

6 elements can be used to identify openness people; which are active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual curiosity, and challenging authority (psychological liberalism).

People who score high in this personality category are highly creative, willing to think of new things and abstract concepts. Also, people at the lower levels of this personality classification show characteristics such as less creativity, reluctance to change, and resistance to new ideas.

02. Conscientiousness

This is the type of personality that involves carefulness and diligence. People who belong to this personality model are very organized and goal oriented. Also, very systematic and has a high level of self-discipline. They also engage in more planned processes rather than spontaneous actions.

The lowest level of this personality category is those who dislike plans and schedules, have a disorganized work style, tend to procrastinate, and fail to finish work on time.

03. Extraversion

An extroverted personality shows friendly, outgoing, and proactive behaviors. The opposite aspect of this is introversion personality.

Introverts fall under the category of people who prefer solitude, find social exposure too tiring, shy away from making new connections, think too much before speaking, find conversation a nuisance, and don’t want to attract attention.

Extroverts are the complete opposite of this. That is, people who want to make new connections, who want to build conversations, who want to gain attention.

04. Agreeableness

In this personality model, there are qualities like kindness, charity, affection, solidarity, and altruism. Those who occupy the highest level of this personality category are highly empathetic and altruistic.

People who are rated low here are those who display conflicting traits and behavior patterns that are discordant rather than harmonious. They have no understanding of others, their problems, their pains, their emotional distress, their mental state.

Agreeableness can be measured by trustworthiness, sympathetic thoughts and behavior, degree of altruism.

05. Neuroticism

This is the most important and fundamental personality model in the Big Five approach. People who are highly aligned with this personality category are quick to anger and constantly fall into thoughts of doubt, confusion, fear, anger, frustration, jealousy, envy, guilt, loneliness, depressed mood.

The opposite of this is to be emotionally stable, deal well with stress, have no regrets, and have light thoughts and a mind.

Out of these five models, which category do your behaviors and characteristics belong to? However, all of these are elements that add value to individuals in a different way. If people were all the same, the world would be a very boring place.

There should be innocent and violent people, silent and loud people, conscious and unconscious people in the world. Otherwise, nothing like new things, new attitudes, ideologies, cultures, social levels, ranks, new creations will be born in the world.

The world moves forward from a combination of different individual behaviors through interpersonal behavioral heterogeneity. So don’t look at the differences in individual behaviors and traits as strange.

10 Ways to Improve Your Personality

Regardless of your personality subtype, you should strive to live in a more correct manner and to be respected and loved by others without being rejected by society.

Then an argument that some people present is that “I don’t care about society”. This is a very basic, elementary level statement. Society can move forward without you because you are just another person. But you can’t live without society.

Because you can never be self-sufficient. Even if you buy some food, you have to deal with the outside society, even if you go to buy a dress, get a haircut, buy some medicine, go to the bank, you have to associate with the outside society.

So, let’s talk about 10 simple yet effective ways to live in a way that protects reputation, self-respect, and importance in the eyes of society.

01. Project a Positive Image

The first and foremost factor by which people measure your personality is your outward appearance. Because the first thing a person sees is your appearance.

Appearance can include the way you dress and your facial expressions. In terms of dressing, you don’t have to wear expensive branded clothes. All you have to do is arrange your clothes and attire in such a way that it suits the place or event.

Clothes worn for casual travel are not appropriate for a special occasion, and clothing worn for a special occasion is not appropriate for the workplace. Therefore, think carefully whether the style of the dress worn, the color of the jewelry used for it, etc. match each other.

However, it is always best to practice dressing simply. There is much neatness in simple clothes without complicated styles. Wear clean clothes.

Next is your facial expressions. No matter how many problems you have, don’t let the outside world see them on your face. For that, you can either keep a smile on your face or you can maintain a neutral face that doesn’t reflect any mood.

A neutral face is not a gloomy face, but a rude indifference that does not show any mood. Never show your true state of mind to society. If you are depressed, no one will feel sorry for you, except most people will be happy about it. So, refrain from informing the society about your problems.

02. Be Quiet and be a Listener

There are times when you feel embarrassed because of talking too much. When you talk too much, people see you as stupid. Being silent and not talking too much and responding only to what is necessary is a very noble trait.

So instead of the habit of talking a lot, get used to listening a lot and keeping quiet. Then it is possible to understand the opinions, ideologies and what kind of people these people are based on what they are talking about.

Accordingly, you also get the opportunity to understand people better. Also, following a quiet demeanor, people are hesitant to make a single conclusion about you because they cannot understand what kind of person you are.

03. Help Without Expecting Anything in Return

Anyone can become helpless at any time. In such a situation, it is a high human trait to help that person as much as possible. When a person is helpless, you should forget past disagreements and resentments and help them.

Also, after a favor is done, it is a very mean trait to publicize it everywhere. Once you do someone a favor, don’t go sharing it with others. Also, don’t expect anything in return from that person.

Also, never forget someone who has done you a favor. While it is low manners to talk about a favor you have done to people, it is a high quality to praise and speak respectfully of a favor someone has done you.

04. Develop Knowledge

A factor that determines your education and intelligence when you speak is your knowledge and understanding of the topic you are talking about.

Talking about a topic that you do not have clear knowledge and understanding of is a challenge. Also, there is a high chance of being embarrassed to talk about such unknown things.

So, develop knowledge about general things through internet, books, newspapers. It enables you to communicate and present ideas better and more clearly and intelligently about many things.

05. Improve Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills are one of the most valuable things to have when living in everyday society, interacting with people, and talking.

Interpersonal skills include communication, listening, conflict resolution, empathy and more. If you have these skills at a very good level, you have the ability to show a higher personality in front of the society.

Also, due to the weakness of interpersonal skills possessed by a person, such people lead to various conflict situations in the society as well as being slandered in the society.

06. Study People

When you meet new people, get used to studying them from a distance before suddenly engaging in conversation with them. You can get a rough idea of what kind of person they are by their behavior and mannerisms.

So, before talking to a person, before becoming friends, get some understanding about those people. Through that, you can even understand whether people are compatible or not.

Also, watching them from a distance as a third person allows you to see the good and the bad in their behavior. Through that, you can add some things to your personality, and you can also understand and remove the insignificant bad behavior in yourself.

07. Speaking Style

Another important thing to improve your personality is your speaking style. That is, the way you pronounce words, the intensity or smoothness of the speech, the tone of voice, the way you move your body while speaking are very important things.

Look at the people who have the best serious personalities. Study their facial expressions, voice control, body movements, etc. when they speak. Through that, try to build a style that suits you.

Some people make unnecessary movements rather than speaking, some people speak too loudly or inaudibly, smile inappropriately or make inappropriate facial expressions. All of these can cause damage to your personality.

So, develop a unique and engaging style of speaking while speaking. There, people enjoy listening to you more, and they are more likely to imitate the way you speak.

08. Walking Style

A woman’s walk should be more modest than a man’s and a man’s walk should be less gentle than a woman’s. A man’s walk should contain some solemnity. A certain gentleness should be seen in the way a woman walks.

Study how different leaders and successful entrepreneurs walk. They have a unique and attractive walking style. This also has some effect on the personality of a person.

09. Being Polite and Having Good Manners

Your good habits, good manners and morals help to enhance and show your personality. Your good habits, good manners and morals contribute to the improvement of your personality.

There are times when some people have to be humiliated and insulted because of their bad habits. It means that when you are in a congregation, when you are at a festival, at a dinner table, in a meeting, you should show the highest characteristics and manners.

You should always be polite and ethical. Sometimes society may reject you when you try to break the social norms. High manners accepted by the society should be reflected in your character and behavior.

10. Study Your Character and Behavior

The most important thing to improve your personality is to understand your personality traits. By studying your personality traits carefully, you will be able to understand your faults and shortcomings.

Before going forward with the society, you can think about what measures you need to take to overcome your personality problems and weaknesses.

Understand it and work to develop the behaviors and character traits that need to be improved, and remove inappropriate behaviors and habits.

But this does not mean changing your true nature and assuming a strange new personality. It means to get rid of your petty natures and build a more admirable personality.

People are different from each other. No personality type is strange. They are different and unique in another way. So, you don’t have to completely change your natural personality model. All you have to do is change some small things to live in society.