Personality Development

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Swami Vivekananda

Table of Contents

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

INTRODUCTION

What Is Personality?

It Is Personality That Matters

Laws of Personality Development

Different Layers of Personality

Man Is Divine

Pleasure Is Not the Goal

How to Change Our Character?

Influence of Thought

Control Your Negative Emotions

Change Yourself First

Take the Whole Responsibility on Yourself

How to Work?

Work Like a Master

Doing Good to This World

Unselfishness Will Bring Success

It Is Love That Pays

Weakness Is Death

Be Brave

Heroism

Faith in Oneself

Imitation Is Bad

What Is Ethics?

Hold On to the Ideal

The Power of Concentration

Develop the Sense of Equality

Be Free

March On!

REFERENCES

Landmarks

Table of Contents

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

The development of one's personality, done in the right manner, is a challenging and rewarding task for every individual, particularly for the energetic youth who can gain much from it. It is challenging in that it demands hard, methodical labour, perseverance, and careful attention. And it is rewarding since no effort in this direction goes in vain. In fact, every effort brings success and satisfaction proportionate to the attempt. Moreover, it is every person's duty to work towards it, since personality development is necessary for success in any field.

In the writings, talks, and lectures of Swami Vivekananda, constructive ideas relating to personality development are profusely scattered. After culling those ideas systematically from The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, published by us, a compilation entitled Personality Development was published by Sri Ramakrishna Ashrama, Mysore, in December 1999. The booklet included an illuminating introduction, for which we owe our grateful thanks to its writer. We now have great pleasure in reprinting this book hoping that the readers, particularly the younger generation, will be greatly benefited in their efforts towards personality development.

Kolkata

August 23, 2001

Publisher

INTRODUCTION

What Is Personality?

According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, ‘your personality is the type of person you are, which is shown by the way you behave, feel and think.' Personality, according to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, is the 'whole nature or character of a person.'

How a person behaves, feels and thinks, how he conducts himself in a given set of circumstances is largely determined by the state of his mind. Mere external appearance or a person's speech or mannerisms are only fringes of one's personality. They do not reflect the real personality. Personality development in the real sense refers to deeper levels of a person. So a study of our personality should start from a clear grasp of the nature of our mind, and how it functions.

Necessity to know our mind :

We intend to do many things—make resolutions to cultivate good habits, to kick certain bad habits, to study with concentration, to do something with a concentrated mind. Very often our mind rebels, forcing us to beat a retreat from our efforts at implementing our resolutions. A book is open before us, and our eyes are open. But the mind has started wandering, thinking about some past events or some future plans. The same thing happens when we sit for a few minutes trying to pray or think of a divine name or form. Says Swami Vivekananda: 'Free! We who cannot for a moment govern our own minds, nay, cannot hold our minds on a subject, focus it on a point to the exclusion of everything else for a moment! Yet we call ourselves free. Think of it![i]

According to the Bhagavad Gita, the undisciplined mind acts as our enemy, whereas a trained mind acts as our friend.[ii] So we need to have a clear idea of the mechanism of our mind. Can we train it to obey us, to cooperate with us? How can it contribute to the development of our personality?

The fourfold functions of the mind:

The human mind has four basic functions. This can be illustrated by an example: suppose I meet a person whom I had met somewhere, say, about ten years before. I try to recollect when and where I met him and who is he. From the inner recesses of my mind there begins a process of scanning, as it were, to check if there are any events stored there connected with the person. Suddenly I am able to recognize the person as so and so and finally say 'he is the same person I met in such and such a place,' etc. I now have a firm knowledge about the person. Analysing the above example, we are able to discern four functions of the mind:

Memory: The storehouse of memory and impressions of our past experiences presents various possibilities before the mind. This storehouse is called chitta. It is in this storehouse that the impressions of our thoughts and actions—good and bad—are stored. The sum total of these impressions determine our character. This chitta, again, is what is known as our subconscious mind.

Deliberation and Conceptualization: Not yet sure, the mind examines the many options presented before it. It deliberates on several things. This faculty of the mind is called manas. Imagination and formation of concepts are also functions of the manas.

Determination and Decision-making: Buddhi is the faculty responsible for decisionmaking. It has the capacity to judge the pros and cons of things and find what is more desirable. It is also the discriminative faculty in a person, which enables him to discriminate between the real and the unreal, between what is to be done and what is to be avoided, what is morally right and what is wrong. It is also the seat of will-power so essential for personality development and hence this aspect of