A career is important, and along with that the development of the overall personality is very important. Both go hand in hand. Some are only into careers, and some are only into personality development and no career. Lacking any one, you won’t feel that satisfaction. So, take both along – Qualification as well as personality development.

Most of all, you have to come across as a nice person. Nice doesn’t mean being goody-goody, but being strong. Of course, your soft words have an effect, but be strong at the same time. That is what happens in the DSN (program). It makes you so strong and unshakable from within.

5 Qualities for Personality Development

Peel Off All Labels

First of all, don’t put a label on you. “I am an introvert. I’m an extrovert.” If you think you’re an extrovert, you feel so restless just being by yourself. If you think you’re an introvert, you feel so uncomfortable sitting with a few people around you. Your likes and dislikes limit your personality. It creates a boundary around you. If you can make just a little effort to see what is that you don’t like, and if it is not harmful.

Laugh Out Loud

If they say, “You are a donkey.” Then you say, “How do you like this sound?” (And imitate a donkey) You end up laughing. And they will also end up laughing. Humour is your best weapon in which you can cut off all conflicts. It is a sign of a cultured, civilized, educated person. If you are made fun of, you give it back with fun.

In life, if you don’t have a sense of humour, you will not be successful. Now you cannot make an extra effort to increase the sense of humour in you, no. When you are confident, when you are relaxed, what flows out of you is humour. So you cannot work to get humour, you just have to be relaxed, content, and centred. Being centred is good enough to bring the humour out of you.

It’s a combination of “nothing matters to everything matters”. Have both! If everything matters, then there is no humour. If nothing matters then too, there is no humor. Don’t try to impress somebody. You will fail miserably. When people try to make an effort to make someone laugh – it appears unintelligent and foolish, childish humour. For those who are intelligent and mature, humor is natural to them. If we can let go of this rigidity, we will be good communicators. And if you are a good communicator, you’re bound to be successful.

Fools take humour too seriously! The cruel use humour as a sword to insult others. The irresponsible use humour to escape from responsibility. The intelligent use humour as a shield against humiliation. The wise use humour to bring wisdom and to lighten every situation.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Make your smile cheaper and your anger expensive.

Commit

Commitment is essential. Without commitment, there is no stability, no happiness, and no progress in life. The difference between a flood and a flowing river is that water flows regulated in a direction in a river. During floods, the water is muddled and has no direction. Similarly, the energy in our life needs some direction to flow. If you don’t give direction, it is all confusion. Today most people are confused because there is no direction in life. When you are happy, there is so much of life energy in you; but when this life energy doesn’t know where to go, or how to go, it gets stuck. When it stagnates, it rots! Just like the water has to keep flowing, in the same way, life has to keep moving. For life energy to move in a direction, commitment is essential. 

Also, just like you run out of fuel in the car and have to refill it again and again, in the same way, your dedication and commitment run out in the course of time and it needs constant renewal! You have to dedicate and rededicate again and again. When dedication is not complete, it leads to grumbling and complaints. Total dedication brings enormous enthusiasm, zeal, trust, and challenge, and does not leave any room for ego. 

A commitment can only be felt when it oversteps convenience. That which is convenient, you do not call it commitment. To the wise, their commitment is their comfort. Whenever their commitment is shaken, their comfort is also shaken. To the lazy, commitment is torture though it is the best remedy!

An uncommitted mind is miserable. A committed mind may at times experience rough weather but it will reap the fruits of its toil.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Roll With It

You know human nature is such, that we have tremendous adaptability. One who can run can stop. And one who’s standing still can run also. If we forget to use these opposite abilities that we have, we are not doing justice to our own lives. 

For example, a door which can be closed should be opened. A door which can be opened should be able to close also. Otherwise, it’s no door. Same way with human existence. We have the ability to work dynamically at the same time, retract from it and be quiet and calm. You have the ability to talk, talk, talk, talk, and blabber, and you should have the ability to keep shut. Because, when you keep shut, when you keep quiet, only then you listen, you hear, you think.

The world is full of paradoxes; life is full of opposites. The art is to embrace the opposites, accommodate the paradoxes & live with a smile.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Be Sensitive, Yet Sensible

The best combination is being sensible and sensitive at the same time. Having a sharp intellect and a soft heart is the most desirable combination. People who are good-hearted often cannot think straight. They cannot think practically. They just get carried away emotionally. And those who are very sharp in their intellect, very sensible, they’re not sensitive to others’ needs and others’ feelings and emotions. Both are incomplete. Isn’t it? That intelligence which is crooked has very little value. And that innocence which has no intelligence has also no value. Often we find intelligent people are not so innocent. And the innocent people are not so intelligent. But what is needed, what is achievable is innocence, in combination with a sharp intellect. 

5 Must Visit Places to Blossom Personality

Every human being should spend five days in his life in five different places.

1 – Jail 

For compassion…

You all should spend one day in jail. With all those who have been condemned as criminals. Talk to them. Your life will be transformed. You will have compassion for them. There is nobody to sit and talk to them and heal their wounds to transform them. One day in prison will open up your vision, your prejudice will go and your tendency to condemn people will disappear.

2 – School

For patience… 

One day in school, maybe with children who have special needs and you have to teach them something. How many times do they make mistakes, with the challenge you have to make them repeat the poems and you have to teach them? Do you know how much patience you need to have? Primary school teachers are much more evolved than professors of colleges as they need a lot of patience to deal with them. So someone who is impatient, you send them to primary school.

3 – Farmer

For faith…

One day with the farmer in the garden. Just be with the mud, sowing seed and watching how the seed sprouts. You need to have patience to see that seed sprouting and that caring for trees. One day may not be enough. When you prune the trees, you are not pruning to drop roots. Pruning is so that the trees can grow better. 

4 – Hospital

For recognizing transiency

One day in a hospital, maybe even hospice and see life is so impermanent. Of course, those who are working in hospitals, become sort of insensitive towards this. They are used to it. When you are used to something, you no longer learn from it but when you have never done something for a change when you go and do something like that you learn a lot.

5 – Mental Hospital

For an open mind…

One day in the mental hospital and see what they all speak. Do you take it seriously? If you take the word seriously then you are part of the patients there. You should be counted. We take people’s words too seriously. Things are going to happen or even anyway happening from another law, from another level of existence. But we take too seriously what this guy said, what that lady said, who said what and all those things. We take it to our hearts and boil. It makes our minds negative, it gets so thick and the thick head is the bother for you. Whoever said something and they went but those words got into your head and it boiled your head. It made you so hard and insensitive in yourself. You don’t know how you behave. You’re not at all aware of your own reactions, your own perception and your expression gets totally messed up or becomes so gross.

Key Takeaways

Personality is the one that people perceive. The whole journey of life is from being somebody to becoming a nobody, and from being a nobody to being a part of everybody. If someone is stuck with the idea of personality, there is less scope for them to grow. Everything is changing. People change, their ideas change. Let us acknowledge this basic fact. So, if you have judged, then even your judgement can change. See the possibility that people and things can change at any time and don’t hold on to judgements.

When your mind is not complaining & is responsible, courageous and confident; you become inexplicably beautiful.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

You hear all the slogans, “Save the environment!”, “Save water!”, “Save food!”, “Save our Earth!”, “Save trees!”  The most important is, “Save your mind at all costs.” 

Commitment, courage, confidence, compassion, everything comes up in life when the prana is flowing uninterruptedly in the central channel. It gets activated during yoga, during meditation and spiritual practices. 

Begin your journey of mind management to attain a magnetic and charming personality by joining yoga, meditation and the most versatile breathing exercise – Sudarshan Kriya^TM with Art of Living.