How do we form a personality?

Our body is a wonderful machine and our brain is its control panel. While our sensual organs sense things around us and our heart feels different emotions, our mind is the one that controls everything and helps us think and use intuition to make sense of the world. It is these four functions that include sensing, feeling, thinking and intuiting that form the base of our personality.

You must have heard a lot about personality like important traits, behavior, types and so on but how are these personalities actually formed? We all are made up of noting but flesh and bones. The only thing that is real and working logically is our brain so if we assume a certain personality, it has to do something with the brain.

We all are equipped to perform the four functions of sensing, feeling, thinking and intuiting beautifully but not all of them are perfect. Some people are more of thinkers and others connect more with emotions. Some are intuitive in nature while others are spiritual too. So, how do we form a specific personality? And how is shaped in the first place? Why are we like this? These and many more such questions may have struck you sometime in life but as they were not the life and death scenarios , you may never have bothered to deep dive to find their answers. But, if I have to tell you that you have the power to create a personality you desire if only you understood how it is shaped, would you like to know more?

Carl Jung was a famous psychologist who is behind the shaping of many influential theories. He explored these four psychological functions and based on their level of dominance in a person, defined certain personality types. As per him, every function that we have from the four mentioned could either be superior that is dominating or inferior or suppressed. If one of your functions is highly enhanced and dominating most of your behavior then you are bound to face a low in the other three capacities. For examples, if you are hell of a thinker, you might not be too good with emotions or sensual experiences. On the other side, if you are too emotional, you may not do much of thinking before acting in your life.

Based on which function is dominating and which is living under the shadow, you form a personality. Dominant trait sits in your conscious head and you always act according to that but the repressed function hides in our sub conscious head so we cannot see much of it. This doesn’t mean that you do not posses all the powers. You do, but what dominates decides the personality traits you carry. There are several tests available online to help you find your personality type but if you really want to know what is behind that type and what traits make you a specific kind of personality, you might want to explore 5 dominant personality traits that almost all of us would carry. Only the level of dominance would vary with each case.

So, what are these dominant personality traits?

Extroversion: If you are social and outgoing, you would score high on this factor but if you are a shy type and hardly socialize, you would score low.

Emotional Stability: If you are able to keep check on your emotions, you would score high on this trait but if you are a negative thinker who gets depressed easily, you would score low.

Agreeableness. If you are optimistic and friendly, you would be high on agreeableness but if you find it difficult to get along with your friends and accept their ideas, you would be low on this dimension.

Conscientiousness: A diligent and careful person would score high on this trait and a person who is highly disorganized and impulsive in nature, would be low.

Imagination: Are you open to experience new things and learn from them? If yes, you could be a person with good imaginative power but if you are not then, you may not have developed this personality trait.

The Big Five personality traits discussed above can actually simplify things and it would be easier to label yourself. However, if you are still finding it difficult, there is also a test available online that will help you through 50 questions set to identify at what level you stand on each trait.

This all looked too complicated at first when I decided to talk about them in a public forum so I tried simplifying the personality traits through a story of the five dominant personality traits in my session on personality which was sponsored by Global Writers Academy. Do check out the website for its details and visit the YouTube channel to watch the clips of my session. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in comments.