How To Get To Know Yourself

Personality

How to get to know yourself? That is not an easy question to answer. And I shall not claim that it is at all possible. However, over the centuries people have tried to answer this question for obvious reasons. We all would like to make decisions in life that optimally fit our personality and character. So it will help to know our personality, right?

Jung

Psychologists have tried to hand us instruments that will help us to find out more about our nature and behavioral preferences. One of them was the well known Carl Gustav Jung, a psychiatrist and psychologist from Switzerland. In his theory on Typology (”Psychological Types”, 1921) he distinguished between three dimensions that according to Jung characterize human personality:

1. Where do we get our energy?
2. How do we retrieve and process information?
3. How do we make decisions?

For the first dimension Jung suggested two contrasting values: Extraversion and Introversion. Extraversion meaning that the psyche is more outwardly oriented (the outer world of people and activities) and Introversion meaning that it is more inwardly oriented (inner world of ideas, thought, feelings and impressions).
For the second dimension he suggested Sensing and Intuition, Sensing meaning that one largely relies on concrete experiences and the five senses for retrieving and processing information and Intuition meaning that one prefers to focus on patterns, possibilities, the meaning behind ideas, using functions such as dreaming, envisioning, connecting etc.
For the third dimension he distinguished between Thinking and Feeling, meaning that a person who has a Thinking preference is more ratio, logic and rule oriented whereas a person who has a preference for Feeling is more people and value oriented.

Mother and Daughter

During World War II a mother named Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers started to create a personality indicator using the three dimensions set out by Jung. However, they added a fourth dimension: How do you relate to impulses from the outer world? They distinguished between Judging, a preference for planning, organization and completion, and Perceiving, a preference for the spontaneous and flexible, looking for new possibilities. Their indicator became known as the MBTI , The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and has ever since been a frequently used psychological instrument.

MBTI

The MBTI measures your psychological preference for all four dimensions mentioned above. it does so by asking you questions about how you would react, feel or behave under the circumstances described by the test. Mind you, it measures your preferences and does not claim that you would not be able to react, feel or behave differently from what you indicate. It would be a fair assumption to state that your preferences are guided by the behaviour that you display when under stress. If we feel stressed we tend to fall back on behaviour that comes easy to us, therefore indicating those preferences.

For Extraversion the MBTI uses ‘E’ and for Introversion ‘I’.
For Sensing the MBTI uses ‘S’ and for Intuition ‘N’.
For Thinking the MBTI uses ‘T’ and for Feeling ‘F’.
For Judging the MBTI uses ‘J’ and for Perceiving ‘P’.

This means that there are 16 possible combinations of personality types.

Mypersonality.info

I now would like to refer you to a nice site where you can take the MBTI test: http://www.mypersonality.info. There you can do several tests, but the one I’m refering to is called “Personality Types”, which is based on Jungian and MBTI typology. It is very easy to do. You enter a nickname, E-mail address and password and off you go. It should take no more than 10-15 minutes. I also recommend to do the “Multiple Intelligences Test”, which tells you more about the kind of activities you prefer and where your intelligence lies. Go there now and come back!

OK, I Have Done The Test, Now What?

Congratulations! You now know your personality type and possibly also your intellectual preferences. I now suggest that you read about your personality type. You can find lots of texts about your type if you follow the link Full - - - - Profile >> from your test result page. Do you recognize yourself in the descriptions of your personality? Do the descriptions give you more information about yourself and f.i. possible careers that you can strive for? Are you beginning to understand why you are who you are and why you usually behave the way you do? I hope it will bring you some useful insights!

Don’t Forget!

• There is no “good” or “bad” personality type!
• Each of us has his or her preferences
• A preference does not mean that you cannot display different behaviour!
• Preferences reflect our natural talents
• Preference is not the same as ability
• We are born with our preferences
• Your personality type developes throughout life
• Your personality type does not only define your behaviour

Me

For those of you who like to know more about my personality type and multiple intelligences I hereby include my profile badge:

I wish you happy discoveries!

Waldemar,
getting to know himself