What is a good personality? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)
Questioner: Sir, it was mentioned in some of our notes that personality is fake and we should just be ourselves. Then why is it often considered good to have a good personality?
Acharya Prashant : Praanjal, it is emphasized that one must have a good personality ‘precisely’ because most people have a fake personality. Because ninety-nine percent people carry fake personalities, that is why there is so much need to continuously say, ‘Let there be a good personality’.
What is a good personality?
A good personality is a ‘real’ personality. When personality comes from your Essence, then it is a good personality. And that is the reason why most people do not have good personalities. What do most people have?
Listeners: Fake personalities.
AP: We understand what is a fake personality. Right?
What is a fake personality?
That which arises from the influence of a situation. That which has no understanding to it. That in which you are just being carried away by the current, by the social current, by the current of convention, by the current of ignorance. That is a fake personality. So, when it is being said that personality is fake, what is meant is that a fake personality is to be avoided. But that does not mean that all personalities will necessarily be fake.
Yes you can live a genuine life. It is possible. And that is a good personality. That personality may not be the same as what you have traditionally admired. Someone with a definite set of features, facial or bodily, someone with a particular kind of voice, someone with a particular kind of persona, way of dressing, way of carrying himself. That personality may not concur with the image that you have in mind, but nevertheless it will be a real personality. It will be real because it is coming from your essence, your individuality.
Look at this: Personality is like the flower, or the fruit. There can be a rose plant, and you can come and put a plastic flower there. But there is another way also in which the plant can flower. It is when the flower arises from the roots of the plant, when the roots themselves are giving birth to the flower. The flower is the personality.
If there is a rose plant, it has the capability to give birth to a genuine flower. Right? Right or wrong ?
L: Right, Sir.
AP: You all are rose plants. You all have it in you to give expression to your real personality. Then why should you keep wearing plastic flowers? Why should you go to the market to fetch a plastic face? Tell me. If you give yourself the right conditions, the right kind of sunlight, the right kind of nutrients, the right environment, then you will flower on your own. And no plastic flower is as beautiful, as lovable as the real one.
(Referring to the two listeners sitting in the audience) Do you know why I made you both sit a little apart today? Because if two rose plants are too close-by then none of them will flower. Don’t you know that? If you have two plants who are planted too close to each other, then none of them is able to flower. So that’s why a little distance is required, so that your potential can be expressed. That brings us to a nice definition of personality:
Personality is the expression of your potential. The potential is already there within you, when it is expressed, then it is called personality.
Do not think that personality is about a certain way of behaving. No, that is not personality. What you really are, when that gets expressed, manifested, then that is personality. Have a real personality .
Be a genuine man, a genuine woman.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
