Glen Forsyth
24 October 2020
Personal development is the process of developing oneself and his or her ability to develop other individuals, whether it is personal, professional, economic, social, biological, or spiritual. Want to know the seven personality traits that help you be a better person? Read on!
Humility
Most people view humility as an act of weakness. However, humility is one of the personality traits to be a better person. This is because it usually makes someone refuse to fight or show his strength to overpower those who wants to fight him. However in the light of the whole truth, this is not the true scenario.
The fact is that humility is an act of power and of greatness. A humble person has the strength and power to overcome his real opponents. Wondering who are those opponents? They are pride, anger, violence, conceitedness, rudeness and even foolishness. We all know that these destructive qualities can hinder our personal development. Hence, humility is one of the most important virtues we need to develop ourselves.
Compassion
Compassion is a virtue that means co-suffering. Its English equivalent meaning is derived from the Latin words cum (which means with) and passus (which means to suffer). Thus, if you are compassionate with someone, you suffer together with him.
This quality is important in our personal development because it is our key to understanding ourselves and others. Understanding is one state that is difficult to achieve because it requires deep connections and actions that defy our own comfort. Thus, if you want to understand someone’s feeling, you just don’t need to feel what he feels, however you need to justify what he feels by co-experiencing his sufferings.
Having compassion will give us greater chance to succeed in every relationship we entered, such as marriage, friendship, our relationships with others and even in business relationships. The reason is that, with this excellent virtue and the full understanding we gain, we become more capable of providing them the things that will make them happy and fulfilled.
Take note that you can also become compassionate with yourself, to be aware of its sufferings, understand it, and provide the right things that it needs. This is one of the key personality traits to be a better person.
Kindness
As a virtue of being kind and being filled with goodness, kindness brings personal growth to any person because it simply keeps him away from the bouncing harm and permanent disadvantages caused by cruelty and irreverence.
Being benevolent to people will provide you more friends. Being caring to your spouse will bring you a happy family. Being big-hearted to your employees will make them more motivated and productive.
Being generous to your customers will bring in more sales and more loyal customers. And if you are kind to your own body, you will become healthy. As you see, kindness is one of the greatest virtues that will help us achieve personal development.
Forgiveness
We need endurance to climb the summit of a mountain. However we cannot reach it quicker if we are heavy. Thus, we also need to become light. Life is full of extra baggage. They come from the past, present and even from future. Most of them are the fruits of our inability to forgive people (including ourselves) and their actions.
We bear these unpleasant fruits because most of us live in vengeance. Even the humble, gentle and patient persons cannot absolutely be deemed not hiding any vengeance within themselves. That is why if we choose to optimise our ways to attain personal development success, we must act on the virtue of forgiveness.
We can do that if we become self-sacrificing and know how to forget anything in order to make everything better for everybody. Remember to be a better person, and know that forgiveness is an act of selflessness, and selflessness helps us to emerge our inner selves.
Patience
Who don’t know the popular saying that patience is a virtue? Almost every life coach recommends patience as one of the greatest key to success. They are right! Every person who wants to achieve his goal must be patient and enduring.
Just like a person who wants to reach the top of a mountain, he must have a great stamina to be there. If we want to attain self-growth, self-improvement, healthy body or financial progress, we really need to be patient – we need to become persistent movers towards our goals. Patience is simply the ability to regenerate, continue and avoid quitting.
Gentleness
Just like humility, gentleness avoids violence. When a person is gentle, he is not only strong and powerful, however he also knows how to handle and keep his might and force. Gentleness is also vital in leadership, for every king must have a sheath that covers his mighty sword.
In other words a leader should not only know how to conquer, however also know how to care. It is also a virtue that provides as peacefulness and prudence – two important qualities we need for an effective self development.
Love
Finally, here is the greatest traits to be a better person – lovingness. This is also the greatest personal development advice I’ve ever known. If you will read again the last sentence in the passage I gave you earlier, you will read this: “ and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity”.
We have discussed about the great virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness, and they are indeed powerful qualities that will help us attain personal development. However, to make it more powerful and even the most powerful of all, we need to combine and harmonise those virtues into one very powerful team of great virtues. And the only thing that can unite them all in perfect unity and harmony… is LOVE.
That is the greatest seven personality traits to be a better person.
