The progress in and insistence on quality of education, coupled with rapid strides in spread of knowledge calls for equally developed and able recipients.  Thus a definite need is felt for a well-developed personality and character in our life.  The Vedanta concept of personality development is based on the concept of perfection of each soul and self-confidence for realization and manifestation of this inner knowledge.

Is your life not all it could be?

All people, including you and me, have a personality, and every person has a unique personality.  It is what makes us the person we are.  Our personalities control our behavior, thoughts, emotions and even our unconscious feelings.  It makes it possible to predict how a person will act or react under different situations.

But what is personality?

It is deeply fixed, consistent, distinctive and characteristic patterns of our thoughts, feelings and behavior that define a person’s own style of interacting with the physical and social environment.  It is the tendency to behave in a certain way under different circumstances and across time.  Personality is shown in many ways through behavior, thoughts and feelings.  It must be noted, however, that feelings, thoughts and behavior do not make up personalities.  Personality is actually the true nature that lies being these elements.  Personality signifies the uniqueness of that person from others.  What we want to see is the person who is harmoniously developed; great in heart, great in mind, great in deed.  We want the person whose heart feels intensely for the world.

It is the personality that matters

You see what is happening all around you.  The world is one of influence.  Part of our energy is used up in the preservation of our own bodies.  Beyond that, every particle of our energy is day and night, being used in influencing others.  Our bodies, our virtues, our intellect and our spirituality, all these are continuously influencing others; and so, conversely, we are being influenced by them.  This is going on all around us.  Now, to take a concrete example, a man comes; you know he is very learned, his language is beautiful, and he speaks to you by the hour; but he does not make any impression.  Another man comes, and he speaks a few words, not well arranged, ungrammatical perhaps; all the same, he makes an immense impression.  So, it is evident that words alone cannot always produce an impression.  Words, even thoughts, contribute only one third of the influence in making an impression, the man two thirds.  What you call the personal magnetism of the man – that is what goes out and impresses you.

In our families, there are the heads; some of them are successful, others are not.  Why?  We complain of others in our failure.  The moment we are unsuccessful, we say so-and-so is the cause for the failure.  In failures, one does not like to confess one’s own faults and weaknesses.  Each person tries to hold himself faultiness and lay the blame upon somebody or something else, or even on bad luck.  When heads of families fail, they should ask themselves, why is it that some persons manage a family so well and others do not, then you will find that the difference is owing to the man – his presence, his personality.