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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