You would have heard this over and again from some of the best teachers of this world, that our body is the world’s best gadget. This gadget comes with a ton of features, including a simultaneous 10+ dimension experience of the surroundings unlike the 2D/3D movies, ability to use virtually unlimited number of add-ons, huge capacity, high energy efficiency to mention a few. This gadget is far beyond the typical mobile phones, electronics, cars or boats that we aspire and own. We proudly own and maintain this great gadget, charge it regularly, and take pride in putting it out for the world to see and respect.
Each one of us have an exclusive unique version of it, and this is our best possession, ever. The gadget helps us to experience the world at its best, gather new experiences, face new challenges and enjoy every moment as it comes. In turn, most parts of our lives are spent on using and maintaining this gadget, showcasing the best version of it in front of the world; either aesthetically, intellectually or in terms of its abilities. The body completes us, and we complete the body to such an extent that when the world looks at us, they don’t really see ‘us’, they see our body and its appearance. Only after we communicate, behave and interact with others, they eventually get to know our true self beyond the body, who we are as a package of the body, mind and soul.
How we are perceived in the world decides how we are received and treated in the world. Our appearance is the leading edge, and one of the most important aspects of our persona as we know. Our appearance is mostly made up of the physical image of ourselves, both naturally how we look and aesthetically how we maintain ourselves. This is why we should give an extra attention to the physical appearance, in order to influence how we are perceived externally. Most of our life experiences in the world would be heavily influenced by this image we create about ourselves. Such favorable influence would give us a chance to subsequently turn opportunities into our favor through our intellect, skill and abilities.
It is altogether another matter that magnificence lies in the eyes of the beholder. Different situations in our life would bring us to different types of people with their own prejudices and opinions. What we think as a good frame of image about ourselves could not go well with someone who has a different taste. So, it is but natural that we tend to think, should we care? Well, we should! Because we live in a society and we always depend on each other more than we know. We cannot present ourselves to the society in a manner that triggers anything lesser than happiness, love and curiosity that would attract the world to us. People should be happy that we are around, and our company should be enjoyable and comfortable to as many around as possible.
That brings us to the point, what is the secret to achieve the perfectly balanced persona which is received well by most people around us? And what should we do to achieve that balance? Is there a recipe to success? Let’s find out… There are many theories around this and some of these are time tested and would never let you down! Let us discuss about them in detail
Always remember… ‘Elegance and Grace’
There is always this thing about few people, who seem to be effortlessly charismatic, approachable with positive vibes radiating in their presence. We could easily spot this kind of people around and everything about them would seem easy and nice. If we observe them carefully first thing that we notice is a high degree of maturity in their persona. Maturity in terms of way they behave, manage their emotions and reactions, way they conduct overall. These people are generally original and don’t put too much of effort to hide their negativities or emotions, but they just manage them better. One can’t simply fake eminence and consistently get away with it, as it is intrinsic to character and built on solid life experiences.
What we are looking at is elegant personalities with their graceful behaviors, almost royal-like, built on solid foundations of mature temperaments. Such level of sophistication is based on eminent values such as kindness, positivity towards life, respect for self and others and faith in God.
What we can learn from this, is that along with how we look, our image is influenced by how we carry that look, how are our manners and how we treat others. When it comes to our looks, we should choose elegance over sheer glamour and shine, we should look for class over color. The way we look should be supportive of an elegant frame of a personality. We should fill our space with grace, while also be very supportive, respectful of others. Our behavior, words, movements should be gentle. We must show maturity when its most difficult to do so and be brave enough not react in the situations that cause irate and frustration.
Smile, spread happiness and love
There’s a saying that smile a while, and while you smile you make others smile, and there will be miles and miles of smiles. You know this drill… Smile is the most valuable accessary that you can ever wear. A face without smile is absolutely worthless, and it doesn’t add any value to a social environment. But at the same time, it is important to know that smile is essentially a language, and not just a mere expression. A timely smile can convey a lot of words, which can make or break things. Smiles can be sly, cheeky, understanding, happy, kind or even cruel among many other statements conveyed with such sophistication with a simple expression.
We know everyone face challenges and difficulties every day, and they don’t need to nor are interested in unnecessarily getting involved in anyone else’s problems. That’s why no one appreciates frown and frenzy and a display of such emotions towards general public. What everyone is looking for, is solace in someone’s happy smile in an appropriate time, a share of happiness, love and empathy. To smile and spread happiness is an effortless philanthropy and always commands respect.
Mind the occasion
The world comes to meet us in social gatherings, meet-ups – physical or virtual – and that’s when we get to interact with others, and we should prepare ourselves for the occasion. While some of us would like it to be extravagant all the way, others would prefer more of a subtle and minimalist approach. Some of us would like to bring out that ‘awe’ in the audience, while some of us would want to remain cozy and just blend-in well. But what we should keep in mind though, is that what kind of people are coming, what is the occasion, how is the venue… Remember, it’s the society that would perceive and thus receive us, and that doesn’t entirely depend on how we ‘want’ them to behave. So, we should learn about the social atmosphere where we are getting into and present ourselves accordingly. The key is to have a fairly accurate assessment of the situation even before we prepare for it. We can arrive at this based on our past experience of similar situations and an understanding of the traditions and rules in that group of people. We should have discussions with our friends, peers to know their assessment of the environment and compare it with our own understanding. In case of parties, we should have some knowledge about the host, their larger social circle and their stature. With this, we can arrive at the general pattern and composition of the population of this occasion (give or take few extraordinary cases). Such an understanding would give us a good idea regarding what is generally expected out of a respectable individual in such a circle and prepare well for it.
Don’t be a distraction
Often, we take part in teams, social gatherings that demand that everyone involved are focused on a purpose. The purpose could be social, official or even a person who is performing or celebrating. Our presence in the occasion should be such that the participants are not distracted from the purpose of the gathering; else it would directly or indirectly result in long-lasting unfavorable outcomes for us. That doesn’t mean that we cannot stand out in the crowd, that’s totally up to our personality and our own stature. We did delve over this earlier, ‘its their p’rception of thee yond maketh thy image and the image maketh thee;so thee shouldst at each moment appeareth fat and positive’. Our mere presence itself should bring in a positive vibe in the social atmosphere and that’s the whole purpose of our being in these social gatherings.
Now what could be a distraction would largely depend on the demography of the people gathered around us. Some of the occasions may naturally demand us to match the extravagant and jazzy crowd and look equally good or better, while some occasions might expect us to be classy. Some would be formal setting, and some others could be casual at the best. Some social gatherings would include many seniors, while some other get-together could be of peers, or worse, of an entirely newer generation! The natural tendency is to match the crowd in most of these situations and try to be like them or even ‘better’ than them in their own game! In this process we could try and position ourselves in a way that may be too glaring, erroneous or even shocking.
The right approach should be to recognize the possible social environment and the vibe in the crowd, and appropriately present ourselves in a way that would create a favorable image of us. We should watch out for the basic elements that are loud and standing out prominently in the frame of ours, along with our language, manner and behavior. We should also watch out for the weather, expected changes in the weather and how would be seamlessly adopt to these changes. We should be prepared to smoothly respond to random unforeseen situations like malfunctions in our clothing or accessories, food spills or health issues. In all, neither we as personalities nor any situations that we get into should be a distraction to the occasion.
Don’t hesitate
We can get all the guidance, knowledge in the world, and we may know exactly what is required and when; but as always, its only worth our efforts. For some of us, this has a lot to do with our ‘gut feeling’ regarding what can we do in a social gathering. There is always this easy approach, where we can stay sober, escape the focus and just be present in the group for the sake of it, and exit at the first opportune moment. Given a chance, we would not even have been a part of it and its only for ‘someone else’s sake we do this; we always have ‘better things’ to do instead of ‘these things’.
For some of us, we definitely want to be present as our best version, but we seriously lack the knowledge of what is possible and where to start. We usually would do some research to gain knowledge but then we have ‘other priorities’ and we don’t have time.
Some of even think it’s not really important to put effort to improve our persona because ‘people that matter’, anyway know us. It’s more important to be resourceful, knowledgeable, and intelligent while talking to the few chosen people of ‘our type’ and we don’t really care about our appearance and the rest.
Reasons could be many, but the outcome is generally the same, that we stop ourselves from being the best version of ourselves that is most favorable to us, and nobody else will do it for us. Simple fact that we choose to be part of a group to perform or celebrate something itself means that we value that group and somewhere we need them. Then why do it half-heartedly? In the time we allocate for such a ritual, why can’t we do our best as we usually do with everything else?
First of all, we should internalize the fact that our life experiences, our chances of success in anything we do and how the world treats us, starts with the external image we build for ourselves. Our image precedes us, and acts as a leading edge such as the tip of the arrow to take us forward. We must find a way around and overcome hesitation and actively put efforts in this direction.
Summary
We started our discussion with gadgets, and we know how important the aesthetic characteristics of the things we buy are, despite of any functional or utility value they bring. We would never buy a drab looking expensive phone with great features, but we would buy the one that looks slick. And this goes with humans as well. A recent study on customer behavior towards client service professionals in the US showed a marked increase in respectful conversations when the service staff were elegant. This is also the reason why most sales professionals always are dynamic and look sharp, like how all cutting edges should be!