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C is for ‘Character’

5:51:00 pm


Today’s letter for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge is ‘C’ for my theme ‘A to Z of Effectiveness’. You can read more about my theme here.

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Haven’t we all heard terms like ‘towering personality’ or ‘sunny personality’ when describing someone? We often refer to how that particular person ‘appeared’ to us; certain behavioral traits that gave off the feeling that she was bright and cheerful. What we aren’t referring to is how that person is deep inside; what her core values or principles are.

This difference is very clearly highlighted in ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, where Stephen Covey talks about the Character Ethic and the Personality Ethic. Basically, he says that one’s personality is something that can be acquired, or built upon with a lot of practice. However, one’s character is at the very base of one’s soul and has the final say in all decisions.

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There’s a reason I chose the lighthouse in the first picture of this post. It’s a nod to the story mentioned in the book, about a captain at sea when it’s dark, who keeps asking an oncoming ship to change course to avoid a collision, only to realize that he’s been talking to a lighthouse. Obviously he’s the one who had to change course!

Our character/principles/core values are supposed to be like that lighthouse, immovable and steady, come what may. Depending upon the circumstance at hand, we need too change the course of our actions, avoiding any clash with the lighthouse of our character.

If you look at the world today, you can see that there’ so much superficiality that a person’s innate goodness often gets ignored. It’s high time that people adjust their paradigms towards the Character Ethic, so that we can focus on less fluff and more substance!!


I simply loved the lighthouse analogy in the book!! What do you think about the world’s current focus on Personality rather than Character?

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