Personality And Character

We all aspire for personal greatness and social admiration. The best of both worlds is when they both converge — what we do, say or show is in alignment with what the world expects of us. The world expects of us what we demonstrate as our credentials, as per our profile. Any time we go beyond our credibility, the social acknowledgement shoots up many folds, as does our self-confidence. 

Similarly, anything that we do that is below the expectations or worst case, totally opposite to what is expected from us, leads to contempt, criticism and abuse.

But why do we have to have two aims and two benchmarks? Why cannot what we do for ourselves and our social acclaim be aligned all the time? Because that requires a lot of conviction, courage and most importantly, wisdom.

• Personality is a set of personal qualities whereas character is a collection of mental and moral characteristics of an individual.
• The personality is the mask or the identity of a person.
• Conversely, the character is the learned behaviour.
• Personality is subjective, but the character is objective.

Personality is what the world sees us as. Character, on the other hand, is what we really are. Our true effort (all through life) should be towards building character because that is what will remain with us when no one is around. Character is what you do when no one is looking. However, personality is fleeting — u might be perceived as something today and something totally different tomorrow.

And guess what? it’s so fickle that you might have not done anything wrong, but someone else decided to tarnish your image and slimed ur personality with all kinds of lies and it stuck with the public. It’s interesting, that even when your personality is out of sync, it’s your character that helps you weather the tough times. However, the reverse is rarely true (though it might be perceived otherwise, as your character is not right, anyways).

If you are a believer that we all have just this one life to live, working on your character, having some clear ‘first principles’ in life, be known for sticking to them, having a sense of integrity and honesty, being kind to others, always express gratitude and display humility, always be willing to help others and have good words of positivity and encouragement to offer, these are some small and simple steps that will go a long way towards character building. Try it.