“Two things define your personality, the way you manage things when you have nothing, and the way you behave when you have everything.”

• George Bernard Shaw

There are ‘5 P’s for success’ in professional life of an individual. These include- clarity about Purpose in life; Positive Attitude; Regular Practice; Perseverance in life and the most important Politeness in attitude during the phase of success. In professional life, the authority and responsibility always go hand in hand. As one grows higher and higher in professional life, one needs to be more responsible in his/her behaviour and requires a balanced state of mind for taking an effective decision for the organisation. One of the most important personality trait assessed during any Personality Assessment Test or Personal Interview of any recruitment procedure is the quality of a balanced state of mind of the candidate. Psychological tests of SSB for selecting Armed Forces officers, UPSC or MPSC examinations for selecting civil servants or corporate sector key managerial level interviews focus on assessment of a balanced personality trait of the candidate. This article tries to throw light upon the balanced personality traits of an individual and the modalities to improve it.

Introduction –   The personality of any individual depicts his qualities, behaviour, attitude, perception and observance of that individual. A balanced personality is a sum total of the certain desired characteristics, so that an individual’s life leads to peace, harmony and success. According to a research by Laureate (leading international network of quality, innovative institutions of higher education), success depends more on one’s personality rather than the sheer intelligence of that individual. A balanced personality is marked by good physical appearance, emotional stability, higher intellectual ability, higher degree of social adjustment,etc.The major six aspects of a balanced personality include physical, mental, emotional, social, financial and spiritual areas of life. If any one of these gets out of whack it can send ripples through our life. That is why it is important to exercise balance and stay conscious when we begin to drift too far one way or another.

 

Personality traits of a Balanced Personality:

1. Good physical appearance: It includes a proportionate body structure, dressing habits, code conduct and so on. It is aptly said that the first impression of an individual is the last impression and major role in this first impression is played by an external appearance of that individual.
2. Emotional Stability: It signifies total control over the emotions under any situation. This in turn gives practical approach towards life to that an individual.
3. Higher intellectual ability: It includes higher intelligence, problem solving ability, analytical view, synthesis, judgmental ability, decision making, etc.
4. Higher degree of social adjustment: Well-balanced personality individual usually gets well adapted to the social gatherings and performs activities within the accepted norms of the society.
5. High moral character: If one possesses good social and moral values, it makes him the desirable citizen of a country. A good moral character includes virtues like honesty, respect for elders, abiding by the rules and regulations, respecting other’s opinion and so on.
6. Cool temperament: A well-balanced personality calls for a cool mental state. The one, who is more patience towards others, thinks with a rational mind. The idea is that one evaluates the pros and cons of every activity and then only comes up with the best possible result.
7. Direction- There are some hidden qualities of a good leader or a director. A well-balanced personality surely has great convincing power and charisma, because of which, people tend to follow them.
8. Higher adjustability: If one is very flexible and is in a position to adjust oneself to all the situations, then one is not prone to any problem faced by the unbalanced personalities.
9. Pragmatic Thinking: The pragmatically thinking individual is one who has a practical approach towards the life and its manifestations. He generally listens to his brain and not to his heart and is thus successful in all his endeavours.

• Balance between professional and personal life: If one maintains a balance between one’s professional life as well as personal life, and caters for the proper time management, it provides him the feeling of immense satisfaction in life

How to achieve a Balanced Personality? 

The first step to be taken to achieve a well balanced personality is to outgrow all the undesirable personality traits, with the self motivation. Another step is to acquire a good health with healthy life style and regular exercise. One should purposefully focus on developing the success factors such as persistence, thoroughness, accuracy, curiosity, originality, leadership, pride in achievement and creativity in one’s thinking. One should also try to set a good example of personal and social adjustment and develop contacts with the people having socially approved standards, and ideals before one. One should increase one’s social insight to understand people better and to control one’s behaviour to be accepted. One should also avoid the development of a “failure complex” and should perform the proper SWOT analysis of his personality. One should develop one’s favourable self image by stressing one’s potentials and by acquiring the skills needed to achieve these potentials in real life. The life is full of stress and hence one should develop stress tolerance to avoid the self-dislike that leads to self-rejection.

The competition and the stress in professional life is a part and parcel of every person’s life. ‘Eustress’ i.e. stress within acceptable limits is must in one’s life in order to prosper in life but tackling the ‘distress’ needs a skill and here comes the role of a balance personality in all scenarios- desirable and undesirable. The journey to success traverses via balanced personality and one must try to master the same.

(The author of this article ,Lt Col (Dr) Satish Dhage, is an ex Army officer and has been qualified for IPS (Indian Police Services) through IPS LCE 2012. Presently, he is Director, MGM Institute of Competitive Exams Aurangabad.                                     For any queries or feedback, he can be contacted on email id : drsatishdhage@gmail.com)