Everyone seeks personal depth to one degree or another. Personal depth stands as the way to add richness and beauty to our lives.

Nobody wants to be considered a shallow person. Still, the concept of becoming a ‘deep’ person turns many people off. We have this image of a deep person as someone who spends a little too much time stroking his beard and smoking his pipe, lost in thought way beyond us mere mortals.

They ponder too much. They’re smarter than us. They go to the opera -and actually know what the fat lady is singing about! They’re just not normal.

Fortunately, personal depth exists as something else altogether.

Achieving greater personal depth (and not coincidently, greater success at anything you pursue) involves taking specific actions. You can achieve greater personal depth starting today by working with the seven characteristics listed below.

1. Develop and use the generating energies of trust and value.

Trust: Even though you don’t have all the answers, you know you’ll get by. You’re ‘enough‘ and you know it. You can count on yourself. You can rely on your power, strength and talent. Whatever happens you know you can face it: you know you’ll make it. Even though it may not be perfect, you’ll handle the situation at hand ‘good enough’. That’s trust.

Value: You might not be highly visible in the world, but the role you play in life is highly valuable. You know you are valuable in your way - to yourself and to those who love you. Also, you recognize, respond and act upon your value.

2. Develop and use the sustaining energies of life such as discipline and ownership.

The discipline that’s self-imposed: You decide on something and then you follow through. You follow your own plan, your own rules - that’s discipline.

Ownership: Own your thoughts and feelings. Own your emotions. Own your failures - so you can change them. Own that you’re responsible. And own your successes - so you can keep them. Ownership gives you the ‘right’ to change.

3. Continuously create new meaning, new destiny, new personality, and new self-image.

People with personal depth never settle for the way they are. They may be satisfied, but they always seek to become more. More meaning in their life. Higher destiny. Greater complexity of personality. And new self-image.

4. Develop and strengthen character.

Character: By knowing your ideals and your principles, and living by them…. by having ideas and opinions and standing by them…. That’s how you build character and thus increase your personal depth.

5. Continuous expansion of your power, strength, responsibility and creativity.

You look for ways to be more powerful; to act, to get involved in the world around you. You look for ways to take more responsibility from the most minute to the most magnificent. You know your strengths and look for ways to use them. You work on expanding your creativity. (Creativity is anything you do that inspires you or inspires others.) Just taking a walk can be creative!

6. Sustained actualization.

You’re in touch with your thoughts and feelings, and you’re not afraid to put them into action. You always think and feel. You’re aware of that thinking and feeling. And you act upon those thoughts and feelings.

7. Generating spirituality.

You don’t have to separate yourself from the mundane of life to experience your spirituality. Rather, you seek the spiritual within the material. Your spirituality eventually becomes your number one priority.

You come to realize everything you experience is a manifestation of your spirituality. There is no separation between the spiritual and the living of life - that’s the goal of the person seeking or having personal depth.

As you can see, personal depth is not something you check off on a to-do list. Let’s see… walk the dog, take out the trash, and oh yeah - achieve personal depth. No.

It’s an ongoing, never-ending, always-expanding endeavor. Basically it all comes down to becoming more of yourself.

There are no limits, and that’s the good news. You can always experience greater personal depth.