Elements of a Pleasing Personality

The view of success has shifted over the years basically from just industry, patience, honesty, integrity, etcetera though most of these still form the foundation in every success. However, success both in personal and corporate matters now revolve around the human factor. Over ten twenty decades the focus was on machines and industrialism as a factor for individual and corporate success. There was the sense of you can if you’ve got the machines.

Success has become a function of personality, human relation and interaction which revolve around the human factor. In the corporate world public/customer relations has become a key and sensitive aspect of any corporations’ efficiency in service delivery. And it will further shift in that direction. If we must think success in the individual, corporate and communal aspects of life in this age where the human factor is key, then we must consider the fundamental and most outstanding element in the human factor – personality (pleasing personality).

The world’s grown into a tiny village where everyone is virtually a neighbor and distance seems not to be a barrier anymore. The world wants to meet you; and the minimum requirement is a pleasing personality. To an extent you can make a success out of yourself or work by the number of people you know or are ready and able to attract. The question is not whether they care; the truth is that the world wants to meet who. A pleasing personality engenders the discovery and development of many other personal abilities.

Success is not something you achieve, it’s something you BECOME, your achievements you will always leave behind but what you become remains with you only that it gets better. Character development is the minimum requirement for becoming a success. A pleasing personality has everything to do with character development. Here are some elements for developing a pleasing personality.

1. Become the best: If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor said Emerson, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. A pleasing personality is not confined all in good looks. The spirit and character of it is in becoming a person of value – value in the entirety of the word. You owe yourself and the world a personal responsibility to become better. That I think is the hidden essence of creation – growth. Wouldn’t it be a great disappointment for the world to meet you and you have nothing for them? Not even a single value to add to their life. Becoming the best not because you have something to prove, there is nothing to prove, man has never been satisfied by it. You have all to become. Consciously work to become better, have that mind in all you do. When you constantly work at it, luck will not stop you from becoming a success.
2. Become a person of unwavering character: there is nothing more pleasing in a person than being known as steady, dependable and trustworthy. As I walk through life when I see a man – a great man, I see his test. Everyman has his test. Character stands you out in a crowd where material and mundane elements masquerade the majority of folks who present themselves. There seem to be more need for people with integrity of character now than any other time in human history. If there are three fundamental things in man’s life, character development should be one of them.
3. Clarity in communication: communication is a vital instrument when wrongly applied can turn friends into enemies and plunge nations into wars. It’s the most frequent tool used in daily living, yet most people never improve in the use of it. Your voice is your most important asset; most people try to talk like someone else thereby selling their identity. Have we not met people who have something to say but make a mess of it? It’s important you develop good communication skills; it’s not what you say but how you say it. Be bold and clear in speech, let every statement represent what you actually intend them. Getting a word out of your mouth doesn’t mean it’s communicated anything. Let your every word and statement leave no one in doubt of your intention. Especially when giving advice, don’t mold a mountain of words and throw it out there. Let you words be few, clear, bold and precise.
4. Smile a lot: Obviously a smile helps a lot aside it’s medical and psychological importance. Like a butterfly is attracted to the buoyant attractive flower, so you endear yourself to people with your smile. You want to be the guy or lady every other person wants to talk to and associate or stick around, the contrary may be the case when you approach them with a stolid appearance. Laughter is the closest feeling to happiness. People want to be happy, there’s enough sadness and worry to do for another lifetime so don’t go about the place with that face. Some people think they gain respect with serious faces, smiling wins more friends than frowning. One can easily sum the rest of your personality on it. Meet people especially for the first time with a smile. If possible put a smile in everything you do, it’s a sign of competence. If you notice, people who are very good at their jobs do it with a smile; the opposite is as true.  A smile creates a sense of hope and expectation of good, this is the feeling you want to create as well as the impression you want to give about your personality when people come across you.
5. Be confident: confidence is usually a result. It’s not something you ordinarily wield on, it’s what you build. People hardly believe in one who lacks self confidence. There are however cases where people wield false self confidence; where their confidence is disproportional to their abilities. Competence engenders confidence. The more you set goals and achieve them the happier and more confident you become. People readily trust you when you are self confident. You grow in confidence when you meet your goals, you gain trust when you meet others need and expectation.
6. Show understanding: You make yourself likable when you show good sense of understanding. Show a sense of understanding in conversation and response. This you can achieve by good listening. Listen to understand and not basically to answer or respond. A lot of people think their understanding is best expressed only by their response, so they listen very hard.

There is a charm in a gracious personality said Orison Marden, from which it is very hard to get away. It is difficult to snub the man who possesses it. There is something about him which arrests your prejudice, and no matter how busy or how worried you may be, or how much you may dislike to be interrupted, somehow you haven't the heart to turn away the man with a pleasing personality.

How Your Emotions Can Affect Your Health

Have you ever heard the term emotionally induced illnesses (E.I.I)? If you have what do you think of it? if you haven’t heard about it, well you know about emotions because we all tend to have a good doss of them each day. It will interest you to know that your emotions mean more than mere feelings. A colleague of mine automatically fell ill, few hours after he bought a pair of shoes. The price he paid for the shoe was grossly disproportionate to its quality. Emotion is a state of mind that manifests itself by sensible changes in the body – William James. It all boils down to the mind again, everything begins from within. It would never be easy to maintain pleasant emotions always especially in times like these, with disasters, economic crisis and personal hurricanes. We are apt to react with an emotion at certain circumstance and every emotion has an equivalent effect, whether positively or negatively. Over 50 percent of those seeking medical aid today have E.I.I. Emotions like fear, anger, happiness, unsatisfactory attitude or emotion, sadness, disgust etc we call common are by no measure common in their effects. It is not criminal to respond with bad emotions at unpleasant situations but on the other hand it doesn’t help your health. This is what I mean.

1. Anger: when one shows the emotion of anger, the blood cells circulating in the blood increases by half a million per cubic millimeter, the outlet of the stomach muscles tightens, blood pressure rises by over 75% etc
2. Fear: here there is a squeezing down of blood vessels supplying the brain.
3. Dissatisfaction: anyone who is aggressively dissatisfied is a candidate of ulcer.

Now here are some recommendations for keeping pleasant emotions.

a. Learn to laugh: there is no better medicine than a good laugh. Some people are blessed with such cheerful temperament that they seem not to get upset by anything. But not to worry if you are not such. Learn not to always backlash yourself at every mistake. There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.- Niels Bohr. it actually takes less effort and muscles to laugh than keep a sad emotion. A smile does more good to your soul. To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.
- William Arthur Ward
b. Treat every blunder at the point: this will reduce regrets later on as well as self backlash. A manager I know does not waste any time to reprove his workers at any misdid, in doing this he is usually get unpleasantly emotional but the next moment after that scene, he becomes jovial again. That way he makes his point without making enemies as well as ensure his healthy emotion.
c. Respond with pleasant emotions at unpleasant actions. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be realistic with your emotions, doing this at times might also look really ridiculous but you still have to consider the benefits.

Negative action + negative emotion = increase the chances of E.I .I
Negative action + pleasant emotion = cancels and reduces the chance of E.I.I
Good emotions are your best medicine. Can you control your emotions? If you can you, you have a hold on your health.

Happiness Is A Choice

Happiness is a key aspect of success. It would be difficult to disconnect success from happiness. There is this perception that happiness has everything to do with the rich than their counterpart, sometimes it tends to be true.

However, it’s crucial to emphasize that happiness is not solely a result of wealth or abundance; “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”-Herman Cain

If happiness really is a thing of choice, it then suggests that people who find themselves in sad depressed shape deliberately chose to be that way. Personally, I don’t think anyone would deliberately opt to live a sad depressed life, sometimes these things just befall us and we find it difficult to break free. When this happens a lot of people go chasing fading shadows rather than solution.

People don’t necessarily choose to live sad depressed lives, they only fail to do what is necessary to be happy and stay happy. “Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.”

Anybody can be happy despite the situation. It only requires understanding and a little bit of self control. There are steps one must take to keep happy despite the state of affairs:

Get to understand: many sad depressing situations we encounter result from poor and negative response to the problems we face. Therefore we have to understand that external problems we encounter should not engulf and control other areas of our lives. Though it’s quite difficult, we must learn how not to shift problems from one aspect of our lives to other unrelated aspects. Happy is the man who…understands Prov 3:13

Recognize that happiness is not necessarily the absence of sadness or problems neither is it ensuing from riches. It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. -Spurgeon

Use yourself as a yard stick: if you want to keep happy, don’t use the achievement of others to measure your own improvement. It is wisdom to understand that life is a race and your opponent is you. Work and grow at your pace. However this doesn’t suggest you should compromise hard work, timing and diligence. You might never get to be that happy fellow you want to be if you measure your progress by the achievement of others, because whether you like it or not, you will always see things that will challenge you and meet people with better advantages than you. Happy is the soul that has something to look backward to with pride, and something to look forward to with hope. -Wilson

Choose to hear right: after her observations at the royal palace of King Solomon, queen Sheba stated; ‘Happy are your men, happy are your servants, which stand continually before you, and that hear your wisdom’. Happiness doesn’t just fall from I don’t know where; you have a role to play. Get to hear words that stir your being towards happiness. Say things that make people happy; your words at this point are very important.

Be happy when corrected: one interesting thing about humans is that we tend to detest anything that will oppose our intention. Someone once corrected me in a harsh manner, to his amazement rather than be angry at his tone and manner of correction I responded quite cheerfully. That singular act changed his countenance and the general impression in the room…. happy is the man whom God corrects: therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty Job 5:17.

Help bring happiness to others: joy doesn’t only come by sharing it also comes by caring and helping. Be humane enough to help someone in need, be a light for someone in the darkness of her confusion, give little comfort to the one who is in despair… he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he. Prov 14:21

Avoid frustration: anger comes before frustration and it doesn’t take long before it turns into sadness. Frustration can mean that you are expecting too much or that you know you should be doing more.
If money or power can buy happiness then the author of the book of Ecclesiastes should have been overjoyed. He tried at one point to make a test of pleasure by seeking happiness in his in riches. And his conclusion went this way ‘So my mind was turned to grief for all the trouble I had taken…’ Eccl 2:20’

Happiness depends on a lot of factors but most importantly it depends on you, first chose to be happy irrespective of circumstance. Life tends to smile back at those who smile at it.