Pleasing Personality

What you want to be eventually, that you must be every day; and by the quality of your deeds will get down into your soul.
-Napoleon Hill

What is a pleasing personality? It is a personality that attracts. Your personality is the sum total of your own characteristics and appearance that distinguish you from all others. Whether your personality is attractive or not is another matter. By far, the most important part of your personality that which is represented by your character. Therefore it is also the part that is not visible.

The style of your clothes and their appropriateness undoubtedly constitutes a very important part of your personality, for it is true that people form first impressions of you from your outward appearance.

Even the way you shake hands forms an important part of your personality and goes a long way toward attracting or repelling those with whom you shake hands. But this art can be cultivated.

The expression in your eyes also forms an important part of your personality, for there are people, and they are more numerous than one might imagine, who can look through your eyes into your heart and see the nature of your most secret thoughts.
The vitality of your body-which is sometimes called personal magnetism also constitutes an important part of your personality.

Elements of Pleasing Personality

There is one way in which you can express the composite of your personality so that it will always attract, even though you may seem outwardly unattractive, and this is by taking an honest interest in other people.

It is useless to try to sell someone anything until you have first made them want to listen, as it would be to command the earth to stop rotating.

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much.

It pleases him who gives and him who receives, and thus, like mercy is twice blessed.

-Erastus Wiman

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

-Theodore Roosevelt

We are all human, and we are all more or less vain. And we are all alike in this respect: We will listen with intense interest to those who talk to us about that which lies closest to our hearts. Then, out of a sense of reciprocity, we will also listen with interest when the speaker finally switches the conversation to the subject closest to his or her heart, and in the end we will not only "sign on the dotted line" but we will also say, "What a wonderful personality!"

How did the new salesman, just made the sale.

He said that when he reached the artist's studio he found him at work on a picture the artist has been so engaged in his work that did not see the salesman enter. So the salesman walked over to where he could see the picture and stood there looking at it without saying a word. When the artist finally saw him, the salesman apologized for the intrusion and began to talk - about the picture the artist was painting.

He knew just enough about art to be able to discuss the merits of the picture with some intelligence, and he was really interested in the subject. He liked the picture and frankly told the artist so. For nearly an hour those two men talked nothing but art, particularly the picture that stood on the artist's easel. Finally, the artist asked the salesman his name and his business, and the salesman replied, "Oh never mind my business and my name. I am more interested in you and your art."

The artist beamed. But not to be outdone by his polite visitor, he insisted on knowing what mission had brought him to his  studio. Then, with an air of genuine reluctance, this salesman introduce himself and told his business. Briefly he described the securities he was selling and the artist listened as if he enjoyed every word that was spoken. After the salesman had finished, the artist said, "Well. well! Other salesman from your firm have been trying to sell me some of those securities, but they talked nothing but business. In fact they annoyed me so much that I had to ask one of them to leave; But you present the matter so differently and i want you to let me have two thousand dollars' worth of those securities."

Remember that : "You present the matter so differently."
And how did this new salesman present the matter so differently?
What did this master salesman really sell that artist? Did he sell him securities?

No! He sold him his own picture that he was painting on his own canvas. The securities were almost incidental.

Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.. Each rebuff is an opportunity to move forward; turn away from them, avoid them, and you throw away your future.
-OG mandino

We look at a successful person in the hour of their triumph and wander how did they did it, but we overlook the importance of analyzing their methods. And we forget the price that they had to pay in the careful, well-organized preparation that had to be made before they could reap the fruits of their efforts.

Cheap flattery has just the opposite effect to that of constituting a pleasing personality. It repels instead of attracting. It is so shallow that even the ignorant easily detect it.