In my previous article (Is Your Child Focusing on Education or Academics?) I shared the importance of personal Development for children using a very simple formula

Education = Academics + Personal Development.

In this article, you will learn how you, as a parent, can focus on your child’s Personal Development. Another simple formula to understand personal development better is

Personal Development = Personality Development + Character Building.

Let me explain.

The universe exists in dual form; up and down, light and dark, left and right, black and white, front and back. For one to exist the other must also exist. Think about it. Is it possible to have a left side without having a right side? No. Right?

Now, keeping the duality in mind, lets get to understand a basic yet extremely important concept. Consider a fully grown tree. It has two main parts. One, the roots and the other, the shoot. Of the two, one is above ground and the other below ground. And one is visible and the other invisible respectively. That is, the shoot is the visible part which is above ground and the roots are the invisible part which are below the ground. (Refer the diagram below for better clarity.)

We all know that the root comes first and then the shoot. And we also know that for a tree to grow tall and stay strong the roots have to be strong enough. Because the roots are the ones that hold the tree firmly in the soil. If the roots are strong and spread across deeper and wider, the tree can withstand any storm. Even if the leaves and branches fall off, it is easy for them to grow back.

Like the tree, we humans also have visible and invisible parts within us. Let me give you two words and see if you can tell which amongst the two is the visible and the invisible part. The first word is ‘character’ and the second is ‘personality’. Character refers to the mental and moral qualities that are distinctive to an individual. While personality is the outer appearance and behaviour of a person. Based on the definitions it is extremely clear that the personality is the visible part and the character is the invisible part.

We just derived that the invisible part comes first and than the visible part. That means, the roots or the character of a person comes first and then the personality. The character of a person is his roots. If the roots aren’t strong, i.e. if is character isn’t strong, he might fall off anytime. But if we focus on our character and build it so strong that it is spread deep and wide, nothing can break us down easily and even if we do fall down, it is extremely easy for us to regrow ourselves.