“Personality can open doors but only character can keep them open,” Lily Collins.  I know someone from childhood who has always walked through life like nothing bothers her.  I mean, I’ve been with her through some truly painful and challenging moments and I know things do get to her but the world would never know it.  When we were kids my mom used to say, “That girl could step in a pile of shit and come out smelling like roses.”  It may sound crass or hurtful, but it was meant as a compliment to the sort of resilience and/or skill to slide through any situation and not let it stick.  That doesn’t mean this person doesn’t have her share of scars, but she certainly learned how to navigate situations with a certain degree of ease.  Now, I share this because I was always incredibly jealous of her because she always seemed to get her way.  She could somehow aim at the entirely wrong pocket and still end up where she needed to be, like she could do no wrong.  I thought of this person when I read that quote because I realized I’d been living my life in comparison to her (perhaps in competition with her) for ages.  She’d flit through life, finding great opportunities only to move on to the next one and then the next one after that and she amassed huge success doing that.  I stayed working for the same company that was supposed to be a temporary job for over 20 years hoping it would move me up through the ranks.  Was this a matter of personality or character?  Her personality carried her through multiple rooms while mine carried me up the ladder and who is to say one is better than the other? 

After reading that quote, I understood had been looking at our lives wrong.  Through that comparison lens, I had considered each trait to be better than the other at one point and I was operating from the perception that one was better than the other.  I’d honed skills on the character side, wanting to prove to people I was worthy and she’d honed skills on the personality side creating a network in a variety of ways.  She literally has always had the personality that opens doors and she is amazing at it—and she is truly an amazing, caring, and talented person.  I wanted to create that network but I also wanted to control the narrative around my life and, I will admit, my competitive nature led me to want to be the best (again that came from wanting to prove my worth).  With that being said, the truth is we need to learn to develop both, personality and character.  We need to find ways to connect with people and build a network but we also need to be consistent enough to develop ourselves and others along the way.  It was never a competition to begin with.  It doesn’t necessarily matter how big our network is and it really doesn’t matter how far up the ladder we go.  If we create more bridges than walls, the truth is we don’t need any doors and we can walk as far as we want and that distance is only limited by ourselves.         

The truth is personality and character are two sides of the same coin and that coin is constantly flipping in the air.  Humans are this odd mix of malleability and consistency so the key comes down to recognizing our own signals for what we need to do and when we need to move.  We want to be steady enough to make progress to serve our purpose but we want to be adaptable enough to keep up with the times.  So the reality is it truly comes down to reading the room and reading ourselves.  Looking back at the person I’m talking about, I know part of that secret sauce she lives by is that she just doesn’t get caught up in anything and that in itself keeps her moving forward.  That type of resilience can be developed through practice but I will admit there are some people simply born with that skill.  That is a degree of self-awareness that keeps those individuals seemingly aware of everything but focused on the target.  The thing is we don’t need to create more competition in this world, we need to learn to better navigate through it.  We need to learn to use both sides of that coin and operate with intention as far as if we are creating a network.  That network will start with personality but it will be maintained with our character.  One last thing for consideration is that both will always be revealed.  We can’t hide who we are forever—just embrace those facets of our personality and use them to define our character.