Personality is the combination of your characteristics, qualities, beliefs, attitudes and other aspects that make up you as a person. So when it comes to personality development, it refers to improving all aspects of your life. This guide explains what the process of developing a personality means, the involved factors and how to develop it.
What Is Personality Development?
So what is personality development? It is improving all aspects of your life, which involves you and your interaction with the world around you. It is a dynamic field of study that is always evolving and covers both self-help and helping others to achieve the desired goals.
The personal development goals are mostly designed around improvement in social skills, enhancing self-esteem and developing a person’s potential. The goal can also be considered as achieving overall human happiness by nurturing self-esteem and self-awareness through the development of talents. Some of the other steps involved can include increasing social interactions, expressing and realizing wishes, hopes and ambitions.
In a professional setting, individuals rely on personality development classes where programs, tools, and techniques are used for improving human potential, skills, and bringing other changes.
Factors Affecting your Personality
There are many factors affecting personality and an understanding of their influence can help improve the steps involved in developing a person’s personality. The key factors are as mentioned here:
- Heredity: Your personality will depend a lot on your heredity. You are highly likely to carry certain personality traits from your parents and grandparents. This aspect will also cover the biological influence that covers factors like your build, your behavior, and glands.
- Your Environment: Your environment comprises of your physical environment, your social environment, your family, school and culture. All these factors are going to influence the kind of person you develop into. When it comes to physical environment, it also includes the climatic conditions where you have spent your time growing.
- Intelligence & Psychological Factors: Your personality will also be affected by psychological factors like your interests, your motives, attitude, character, intelligence and will. these factors affect how you react in different types of situations and thus your psychosocial development. Intelligence also has hereditary influence. People who are more intelligent are more likely to do better in their personal, social and professional lives compared to those how are not as intelligent.
- Gender: Your gender is also one of the crucial factors affecting personality. As a general rule, males are more assertive and active compared to females. Males are also more likely to be adventurous while females are more likely to easily get emotionally hurt and be quieter.
There are many other factors that have an influence on personality development. This includes language, social role, self concept, inner drive, and identification.
While so many factors affect personality development, some of these factors need an elaborate overview.
Biological Factors
Hereditary, genetic, physique, physical appearance, and maturation rate are the main biological factors affecting personality development. The following characteristics have a strong influence of genetics:
- Aggressiveness
- Timidity
- Nervousness
- Sociability
Whether you are active, quiet or moderately active is also the results of your heredity. However, at the same time learning and training may also have an influence on these characteristics. Rate of maturing is also a factor that brings differences in behavior at different ages.
Cultural Factors
Social environment is considered as one of the most important factors affecting personality. Everyone lives as part of a society, which comprises of a group of people with home you interact regularly. All societies have a unique culture, which includes a specific way of:
- Feeling
- Thinking
- Goals
- Values
- Attitudes
Culture plays an important role in regulating your life and influences your personality development at different junctures. The culture you grow up in will train and expect you to behave in certain ways, which becomes part of your personality. A culture will have its own standards and methods for bringing up a child it also has expectations about the approved behavioral patterns. There are differences between different cultures in the techniques used for achieving such goals.
Children who are from different social economic backgrounds will also have different personalities. Their personalities will usually different with regard to motivation. Motivation is the basic requirement that helps achieve success. For example, parents from middle class are more likely to stress strongly on achievement than their lower-class counterparts.
Family
Family is another important factor that influences personality. Family is the first social circle you come across and it has the strongest influence on your personality. Social behavioral development is one of the most important personal development goals. Socialization is the process through which a child acquires the potential and behavior patterns which are accepted as per the family and society. As a child you begin acquiring patterns of behavior from your environment that comprises of your family and society. Even birth order has an influence on personality development of a child.
Home is where you have your first social learning and gain your early experiences. So your family has an influence on your attitude towards and expectations from others.
How To Develop your Personality?
Now that you understand what influences personality, you would also know that learning also helps in its development. The following tips will help you on how to develop personality.
- Know Yourself: Before you set out to develop your personality, you should know about it. Analyze your strengths, weaknesses, traits, and other aspects that need to be improved. Find out what flaws you have so that you can remove them.
- Develop a Positive Outlook: If you want to develop a better personality, you will need to have both positive thoughts and actions. Your thoughts have a big influence on how you act. So you should find ways to develop positive thoughts. One way to do so in a more professional manner is to take personality development classes. There is only as much that self-help can do.
- Grow Your Social Circle: You should meet both new and different kinds of people. This will help expand your horizons and provide you wider exposure. Further, you will learn about new cultures and lifestyle. The more people you meet, the more you will learn from them, thus helping with your personality development.
- Become a Better Listener: One of the best personality development tips is to become a better listener. It may not seem to be a big step towards developing your personality, but it is an important step. You can start by practicing a simple method. Listen with more interest whenever someone is talking to you. Pay more attention, maintain direct eye contact and reduce any distractions. This will help you learn more about people and build positive traits.
- Learn to Enjoy: One aspect of personality development is to add a little bit of fun to your perspective. It will make both adverse situations and your life easier. You can look at things from a funny perspective and make others look at things in the same way. This can help make your personality more charming.
- Improve Your Body Language: Your body language is also an important part of your personality. It tells about you and attracts people towards you. It includes how you talk, walk, sit, eat and interact with others. Developing proper body language can be a great achievement. It is something you cannot learn on your own, so joining personality development classes can be the best option.
- Build Your Confidence Levels: Being confident about yourself is one of the best personality development tips. You should always trust in your capabilities and make all the efforts to improve yourself. As you improve yourself, you will gain more confidence. There are a number of ways you can further boost your confidence levels. Read about great personalities, success stories, and think positively. When you build confidence, it can become the best part of your personality.
- Develop New Interests: Every new skill you develop is going to add to your personality. Build as many new interests as you can. It will not only contribute to your personality development, it will also give you so much more to talk about and share with others. This will help you make more friends and more people will start to like you. You would be amazed by how developing more interests can transform your personality and make life even more interesting.
Even your attire is a part of your personality and you should make the right choices based on your evaluation of who you are. Although it doesn’t have as much importance to personality development, wearing something new and appropriate can have some influence on your mindset and how people look at you. in your journey to develop your personality, you should learn everything there is to know about yourself. Learn about your strengths and weaknesses so that you can make improvements at the right places and enhance your positives. So follow the above-mentioned tips to develop your personality and bring the best out of yourself.
