PERSONALITY

There are thousands of ways to describe personality. As much as people can learn, evolve and change in diverse areas of life, their personalities remain the same. Knowing one’s personality is a an enormous step towards being self-aware. It explains why we are the way we are, and why we associate with different groups and find pleasure in certain activities.

Personality, is a characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It embraces moods, attitudes, and opinions and is most clearly expressed in interactions with other people. It includes behavioral characteristics, both inherent and acquired, that distinguish one person from another and that can be observed in people’s relations to the environment and the social group. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/personality/Psychoanalytic-theories)

When asked the question `who are you?’, most people tend to list their academic and professional prowess forgetting to unmask the person deep within. For example, I’d answer the question by saying, my name, age, academic level, and my position in our family: `my name is Valentine, I am a 12-year-old girl who studies at St Paul primary school. I am the middle child in our family.’ This response doesn’t portray anything about who I am. Yes, it is integral to incorporate our family, educational background our various attainments when doing an introduction of ourselves but we shouldn’t dwell on that and turn a blind eye to our inner being: our beliefs and values.

Personality is majorly described through adjectives such as caring, sensitive, outgoing, spiritual, energetic, calm, quiet, rude, bold, short-tempered, etc. It has nothing to do with one’s appearance/body physique. It is 100% about the things that are not tangible about someone. During a job interview, when the interviewers ask you to say more about yourself, they want to know about your talents/hobbies and personal attributes. It is not the time to say the things you’ve written in your CV. Having said that, let me re-introduce myself. My name is Valentine, I am bold, enterprising, confident, enthusiastic, and very outgoing. I have a calm presence that makes people view me as friendly and easy to talk to. I am dependable and always willing to learn. I have good problem-solving skills which make me want to be part of the team coming up with solutions. I find pleasure in reading books, listening to music, and dancing and I’m a talented actress. I believe that self-love is the first step to living life fully for you. I accept and respect people’s points of view and differences. There’s so much more to a person than meets the eye.

By Ambitious Val.