Maintaining Mental Health
As you have learned in the previous section, one way to improve your personality is to improve your mental health. Your adolescence is the time between your childhood and your adult years when your personality begins to assume new importance for you. During these years you form much of the personality that will be yours in years to come. And it is during these years that the knowledge of mental health and personality will be of the most help to you.
The descriptions of four major signs of mental health that appear in this section contain suggestions for maintaining your mental health and improving your personality. You can use many of the ideas presented here to help you know yourself and the reactions you commonly make. You can use the ideas to help you better understand your feelings. They can also help you understand your parents and your relationship to them.
Personality and Mental Health
What is mental health? Mental health concerns feelings, attitudes, and abilities. It is the way a person reacts to other people and situations. A per — son’s mental health may be judged by two criteria , or tests. The first is the person’s ability to "fit in," or adjust, to different situations. The second is the person’s ability to accept or change situations which cause frustration. Perhaps this ability to accept situations which cause feelings of discouragement is the more difficult of the two. Both these abilities not only reflect a person’s mental health, but also are reflected in his personality.
Think for Yourself
Do you think that a person with good mental health always has good physical health?
What is personality? There are many definitions of personality. Most people use the word to mean the total impression a person makes on other people. It is the reflection of your habits, traits, feelings, abilities, and even your appearance. Part of your personality was formed by the time you were born. Part of it has not yet been formed. It is affected by your environment, or surroundings, and may change from time to time.
Often, people say, "He has a cheerful personality," or, "She has a quiet personality." These people are describing obvious personality traits. Actually, no one’s personality is simple enough to be described in a word, or in even a thousand words. Whole books, for instance, have been written about one person’s greed, temper, or dedication. You know that any of these qualities could form only a fraction of a person’s total personality.
Health of your personality. Have you noticed that mental health and personality are closely related? In a sense, your mental health is the health of your personality. Because your emotions, abilities, habits, and attitudes affect both, your attempts to improve one will probably improve the other. For example, if you improve your personality by becoming more tactful, you may find that you are better able to enjoy parties and social occasions as a result. In that case, your attempt to improve your personality would have improved your mental health, also.
Your Personality and Your Family
You probably know people who have pleasant “personalities,” others with little “personality,” and still others with unpleasant “personalities.” Perhaps you have thought about the reasons these people make the impressions they do. Have you discovered that people with good personalities show certain qualities and that people with poor personalities lack these qualities? Did you know that you can improve your personality?
These questions and many like them are important to people your age. Everyone knows how important it is to be well liked by his classmates and teachers. It is easy to see that a pleasant personality can make a person more successful at school and at home.
In this chapter you will learn some of the ways people can improve their personalities. You can also find out how teen-agers have learned to make themselves happier and more successful by improving their personal attitudes and habits.
