Personality Development

Personality Development

Personality development is the relatively enduring pattern of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguish individuals from each other. The dominant viewpoint in personality psychology indicates that personality emerges early and continues to develop across one's lifespan.

Personality means very many things in different contexts. Here are a few:

1. How we carry ourselves;
2. How we appear to others;
3. Our physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, responsive, behavioural get-up;
4. Our capacity to deal with people;
5. How we deal with situations, problems and difficulties;
6. Our Are we stressed-up, cool, at ease, slow, fast, mercurial, anxious, worried;
7. Are we biased, opinionated, judgemental;
8. Are we temperamental or level-headed;
9. Do we come up as parent like (controlling, authoritative, persecuting, nurturing, helpful, assisting) child like (playful, inquisitive, energetic, curious, vibrant, complying, mischievous, rebellious, destructive, risk taking, impulsive, moody) or adult like (rational, logical, weighing, evaluating, assessing, drawing conclusions, mature)
10. Are impressive, dependable, confident, or ordinary, non dependable, not confident.

The encyclopedia of psychology defines personality as : Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.

Coming again to personality development. It could be viewed from the following perspectives:

1. A study of the components of personality that adults have and how they ended up having them.
2. An investigation into the life experiences that moulded a person's thinking, feeling, behaviour, attitude, opinionating to its present form.
3. How a person gets to respond to prevailing situations, problems, difficulties, conditions of life, challenges and what factors may have contributed to the typical pattern.
4. Moulding people's personality to serve a desired need, purpose in life, sport, occupation, role, profession, activity, engagement or while undergoing a situation requiring coping as in cases of divorce, loss, grief, guilt, remorse, anxiety, depression etcetera.
5. A training programme structured to serve a life, occupational, service, role or purpose.

These are two good sites to know more about this topic and also to learn it's various other dimensions:

1. http://www.personalitydevelopment.org/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_development
3. The link to this blog: reflectionsofapk