Personality is defined as the pleasing personal characteristics of individuals that determine the overall behaviour of an individual. The term ‘personality’ is derived from the Latin word persona, meaning the mask which the actors wore on the Greek and Roman stage to distinguish their roles and amplify their voices.  Why should the mask or outward appearance be used to designate something as essentially inward as a personality? Precisely because it is a convenient symbol with which to mark off the individuality of or difference between one man and another. The personality of an individual consists of characteristics like, physique, appearance, intellect, knowledge, psyche, conduct, expressions or performance that are unique for every person and helps them to create impression on other people. Every individual has a unique personality and differs from other people in one way or the other. The significance attached to the characteristics of a personality of an individual tends to vary from person to person, organization to organization, society to society and situation to situation.

It would not be wrong to say that your personality is the image that you represent to the outer world. An individual's personality is a collection of the behaviour of an individual, their upbringing, society, the decisions they have made throughout their life and the memory of the experiences to which these decisions led. There are inherent natural, genetic, and environmental factors that contribute to the development of our personality. The personality of an individual to a large extent is also dependent on the personality of his parents.

There are a lot of factors that determine the personality if an individual, however, three principal raw materials of personality are physique, intelligence and temperament and all three of these are determined both by heredity and by conditions subsequent to birth. The environment around an individual plays a great role in determining his personality. Social circle, friend circle as well as a family play an important role in the personality development of a person. The experiences that an individual has during the course of his life contribute in a large number of ways to the formation and development of his personality. We tend to gain a lot from the situation around us, which contributes significantly towards our personality development. The interaction between the individual’s heredity and environment gives rise to what is known as the traits of his personality.  Some examples of traits are cleanliness, honesty, cheerfulness, miserliness, irresponsibility all are such traits that we learn from our surroundings and environment around us, i.e. people around us do influence our personality in a significant way.

Personality and Self-Confidence

Self-confidence plays a very important role in our personality development. If a person does not has enough self-confidence in his actions as well as decision then it becomes really difficult for the person to achieve success. Only with firm faith and determination, you can be confident of your actions, which in turn would affect the amount of hard work that you put in to towards achieving your goals. It is obvious that only when you are absolutely confident of your decisions, you put in your best effort to achieve your goals. If you really believe in yourself and you are confident of your actions, then it would not take you much time to convince others of your ideas. Success comes to those who believe in it. Self-confidence reflects a strong personality. Only a person with self-confidence is capable of convincing others of his actions and also leading others. If you are not confident then you tend to lose half the battle before even starting. Self-confidence is really important if you do not believe in yourself then how can you make others believe in you, without convincing personality you cannot have a good professional life even if you are running your own business or working as an employee. If you do not believe in you then how can you convince anyone else of your capabilities in an interview or even a client to buy your product or service if running your own business? Hence self-confidence is an important key towards personal development.

Some Personality Characteristics

Some basic characteristics that influence the overall personality of a human being:

• The appearance of the Person
• The confidence of an Individual
• Body language and the way a person conducts himself
• Intelligence as well as smartness
• Education and qualification
• The social ability of a person and how well a person mixes up with other individuals around him
• Trustworthy, High integrity and Responsibility
• In-depth knowledge of some basic facts
• Helpful nature of the person
• Self-management and time management
• Effective Communication ability as well as Efficiency
• Morality as well as Character of an individual and his behaviour in different situations

Need for a Good Personality

Before we talk about personality development, it is very important to understand the need for good personality and what are the reasons that we need to have a good personality. Good personality plays a very important role in our daily lives. Our personality is basically our social image. The way we behave, interact with other people and our habits are all reflections of our personality. Our personality determines our lifestyle; our success at work, happiness in marriage, relations with neighbours and fellow employees etc. all depends upon the kind of person you are.  Psychologists have discovered what personality traits matter to you in your career as well, a person with a pleasing personality always finds him in a comfortable position career-wise.  Als,o it is facts that people with good personality are hired much easily as compared to those who are struggling with their personality. The reason is very simple; a person with a good personality is really confident about himself and his abilities and is in a good command over his positive sides, whereas if a person himself is not confident about his abilities, it is not possible for him to convince interviewers about his skills and abilities. Hence confidence and a good personality are a must. A good personality always pleases everyone. Even for a better life, you need a good personality, smart enough that you can easily make out difference among what is right for you and what is wrong and also to possess such abilities that you can bring up your children and make them a good human.

A good personality is not only necessary for the students and working professionals, but it is also something that will determine your professional as well as personal and social life throughout your lifetime. The way you behave, interact, eat, speak, work, celebrate is all reflection of your personality that determines your image in society. Hence it is not wrong to say that your personality is as important as your soul.

How to make a Good Personality?

Everyone wants to have a good personality that impresses everybody. Everyone wants to get noticed and to stand out of the commoners. A good personality is something that you cannot achieve in one day.  It is something which you have to work for a long time. You cannot just change your personality in one day; it takes time to build up a good personality.  The first thing to do is to be fearless. If you are constantly thinking about what others will think about you, then you can never achieve something extraordinary. A good personality is not achieved by improving one or two habits; it is a collection of a lot of habits that you have to improve or refine, in order to have a good personality. The four aspects of an influencing personality are physical, social, psychological and philosophical personality. Physical personality depends upon pleasing personality indirectly supported by a person’s looks, facial expression health, strength and withstanding capacity. Social personality’s main factors are social values, communication skill, attitude and economic independence especially in relation to wealth all determining the social factors. Psychological personality is in tune with personal values, approach, thinking pattern, emotional management and influenced by knowledge, intelligence and smartness. Philosophical personality is on account of maturity of values.

The first and most important task for personality development is to identify your strengths and weakness and focus attention on the central root that directly or indirectly governs the course of our life and your goals. It is very important to have set goals so that you can direct all your energy and strengths towards your goal achievement. Main factors for developing good personality are:

• Communication Skills: Communication skills play an important role in determining the personality of an individual. While communicating with others it is very important that another person understands whatever you are trying to communicate. It is very important to possess sufficient communication skills so that you can interact effectively with your neighbour’s co-workers and other people around you. A person with good personality always speaks limited and never Braggs anything about himself. It is very important that you do not boast about yourself. Always think before you speak. Always give an honest reply to others and be kind and show respect for other people while you communicate with them. It is not necessary that you are the only one who is speaking listening is also an important part of effective communication, hence along with good speaking skills you also need to be a good listener.
• Physical Appearance: At first sight, a person is judged by his physical appearance. Physical appearance also plays an important role towards your personal development. There are a lot of domains of our life where our physical appearance do matter a lot over any other thing. There are certain kinds of jobs where a good appearance may get you a job instead of some really high grades. Physical appearance not only means your facial looks but it is a combination of your whole personality. Remember personality is not just your looks, you should have a charm in your eyes, voice and face as well.
  A good face will not get you anywhere if you do not have a good dressing sense or communication sense and many other factors that determine your personality. Physical appearance is just a part. Physical appearance also suggests that you are properly dressed up according to the occasion. You cannot think of going to an interview in your shorts and sports shoes, similarly going for a workout in the gym with your formal clothing will also make you a laughing stock. Hence proper clothing, neat clothes and hairstyles and your general cleanliness, all determine your physical appearance which in turn enhances your personality if taken care of.  
• Adapting in various Condition and Conversation: It is very important how well you adapt to new and unexpected conditions. Life is full of unexpected events; no one knows what is going to happen the other moment. At times you may land up in a situation where you do not share interests with the people or the event. In such cases, it is very important to adapt to a certain condition as well as situation. If you want that other people should also like you then you should give attention as well as appreciation when they are talking or want to talk. At times there may be situations that you are not familiar with, a person with a strong personality never fears any kind of situation, and instead faces every situation confidently. Hence one should have such an approach that you can adapt yourself in any condition as well as conversation.
• Self-confidence: Self-confidence, as we discussed earlier, is a very important aspect of personality development, a confident person has the power to achieve anything that he desires. You need to build in your confidence to a phenomenal level, remember that over-confidence can be dangerous, and so keep it in a limit. Confidence is reflected in your actions, the way you shake hands, the way you speak and your eye contact etc, i.e. your body language speaks a lot about your self-confidence. Remember whenever you face a situation confidently; your chances of achieving your goals are 50% higher than normal situations. Whenever meeting someone for professional purpose, be confident. Give a good hand-shake; remember to give a genuine smile and eye contact when you talk. Be well prepared so that you have an idea about what will happen next and you have time to prepare for the coming events.