Understanding One’s Personality

Personality is the over-all expression or projection of the individual’s behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental attributes that  characterizes him as a unique individual in a more or less consistent way but which in a general way is shared with others of similar bent.  Personality is judged not so much in terms of their moral value, as in "character," but as to whether they are "pleasing" or "unpleasing."

            One’s personality determines how well one lives and relates with others and the world.

           

            You can find joy and peace with others and the world by understanding your own personality and that of others.

Almost every day we describe and assess the personalities of the people around us though not in a formal or systematic way the psychologists do.


Different Thinkers (www.texcpe.com/cpe/pdf/il/ILHP.pdf) differ in certain aspects of what a healthy personality but are in agreement in following:

§    accepting and taking responsibility for who and what we are

§    rationally directing their behavior

§    being in charge of their destinies

§    being guided by ourselves as opposed to external forces

§    having self-awareness,

§    being anchored in the present

§    living in the moment

§    increasing rather than reducing tension through seeking new challenges, goals and experiences

The above may serve as a guide in assessing the wholesomeness of one’s personality.

Understanding One’s Personal Worldview

          One’s worldview gives an over-all view of the context by which one lives his life.  Changing your worldview can transport you to a new world and way of life.

             Worldview is a person’s fundamental outlook or life perspective which includes perceptions of deity, humanity and the rest of the universe.  It is the main source of one’s moral code, ethics and many other beliefs. Understanding it will help you make sense of your world and help you make choices for living your life. It helps you realize how you differ from other individuals in their approach towards such life issues as abortion.

            People are not normally aware of their worldview or that they have a worldview and as such are rarely verbalized.  But persons’ worldview can be deduced from their actions. A person who is open and trusting of others believe that most people are honest and trustworthy.

When asked, most people are unable to describe their world-view because they remain in their mind as set of feelings and basic attitudes about the world. They are not clearly formulated opinions but rather fuzzy assumptions about people, society, and existence in general. 

Understanding One’s Self-Concept

            We could live our life without fully understanding why we live and behave as we do and therefore fail to act at times or most of the time in accordance with objective standards of right and wrong.

            It is only by understanding how we see ourselves that we will be able to see the reason for the incongruence of our personal behavior, attitudes and actuations with regards to the demands or requirements of an orderly and peaceful life, whether in our personal life, family life, work life, community life and social life.

            It is our self-concept that affects how we behave, how we regard ourselves and others and how we see others. What is significant about self-concept is that we have the potential to develop realistic but positive self-concept, which will improve our behavior, our self-regard and our regard for others.

            A more practical way of understanding self-concept is to view it as a ‘collection  of self-representations’. An exercise to help us discover or clarify our own self-concept is to represent ourselves or aspects of ourselves using animate or inanimate things.  We can represent the following aspects of ourselves using things, for example:

§        Physical representation

I see my physical self like a Narra tree because I have always been strong and with stamina to withstand the physical demands of living.

§        Relational representation

I am like a Bamboo tree in the way I relate with other people; I am always willing to bend at the pressure of other people, but always bounce back to my true standing at the proper time.

§        Performance representation

In my activities, I am like a climbing vine that proliferates and climbs fast; I am a fast worker and achieve much in relatively shorter time.

§        Spiritual-moral representation

In my spiritual life, I am like a tall straight tree alone on top of a hill, rising up to sky as high as I can.

Our self-concept is something we should not take merely as a matter of fact. Together with our past and our worldview, our self-concept needs to be evaluated in terms of more enduring and more life enhancing truths about ourselves.

Encountering Personal History for Personal Change

Reviewing your personal history leads to self-discovery and understanding. When you review your life with attention and care you discover diamonds within mountain of dirt.
 
Life is fundamentally a creative process, meant to bring about more and better manifestation of living reality. Human life then is a process of bringing about better and improved expression of the human person.

All of a person’s experiences are embedded in the memory cells of the brain which are always ready to be retrieved upon recall. Reviewing one’s life re-awakens and brings to present reality past events and experiences along with the energies that brought them about.

For personal change to happen in a way that positively influences the totality of a person, there is a need to make a journey of remembrance back to the landscape of one’s life.

There are a lot of things that comes to mind when reviewing one’s life. While your eventual focus is on events that may have a bearing on the problematic area you are concerned with it is good to be open to all remembered experiences as possible source of energy and perspective for positive change.

Thus reviewing one’s life can reveal significant moments when life direction changed (turning points in life), when critical events, dark moments, meaningful experiences and important things happened in one’s life. Coming back to these experiences is necessary to understand the root cause of what one need or want to change in one’s life.

Reviewing your life will also reveal those who are God’s messengers sent to help you; persons most influential in your life; the people who influenced you for good. It will also reveal that which you fought against: your personal nemesis, your Achilles’ heel (chief weakness) and those who led you astray.

Reviewing your life reveals your cherished dreams and your spiritual journey; it reveals your life story and enables you to discover and understand your past; and knowing your past, you’ll come to understand your present as well.