Speaking from personal experience, understanding one’s personality type goes a long way to help one condone to certain circumstances with much ease. This goes to say that knowing one’s personality type is in no way as beneficial as understanding one’s personality type. Most often than not we hear people describe themselves introverts, extroverts and in some cases people ambiverts which stems from either introverts or extroverts possessing a few qualities of the contrasting personality. This is the ideal problem Myers Briggs addresses.

Myers Briggs is basically a system which carefully segregates the broad spectrum of introversion and extroversion which was propounded by Carl Jung into sixteen personality types. It is important to note that no one personality type is better than another. Myers Briggs isn’t designed to look for abnormality or dysfunction in any personality type. Instead its goal is to help you learn more about yourself.

Each personality type consists of four letters eg. INFJ, ENTP, INTJ etc. These four letters are simply preferences as each letter has two options. What this means is with every letter you see associated with a personality type there’s an alternative and since there are four letters with each having an alternative or a contrasting feature, conclusively there are 16 options. Hence, the 16 personality types.

The first letter in Myers Briggs is I or E which stands for introversion or extroversion. These terms are familiar to most people as they are the broadest. Extroverts are basically more enthused with social interactions and they feel energised after spending time with other people (which isn’t a bad thing at all). Extroverts tend to seek out social stimulation and opportunities to engage with others. They are often described as being full of life, energy, and positivity. In group situations, extroverts are likely to talk often and assert themselves. Introverts on the other hand are more “inward turning” and tend to be thought-oriented. They enjoy deep and meaningful social interactions and feel recharged after spending time alone. Everyone exhibits moments of introversion and extroversion to some degree but at least 51% of the time most of us tend to have an overall preference for one over the other. (Check the image below to understand this a bit more clearly. P.S. Wendy is highly introverted)

The second letter starts with S or N which stands for Sensing or iNtuition (Yes I know intuition starts with an ‘I’ but the symbol is ‘N’ probably because introversion already uses ‘I’). This has to do with how we make observations of the world around us.

Sensing is meant literally here; how we observe the world with our five senses; What are the facts? What are the numbers? Intuition on the other hand is about the patterns that work within a given circumstance; What are the higher level concepts? Everybody uses both sensing and intuition but as aforementioned its about where you find yourself predominantly.The third letter is either a T or F for Thinking and Feeling respectively. This has to do with how people make decisions. Feeling is not so much about emotions here but value; What value do I give something? Is it good or is it bad? Do I like it or not like it? Making a decision based on feeling entails conclusion such as “I’m going to do this because I like it” or “I’m going to do this because other people like it.” Thinking on the other hand is logical or rational; Does it make sense? Does it work? Is it true? Making a decision based on your thoughts is like ‘ I’m going to do this just because it makes sense, it just works.’ We all do both everyday, and the remember the personality type isn’t meant to put you in a box. It’s just meant to say majority of the time, what do you prefer?

The fourth and final letter is a J verses P ie Judging verses Perceiving. Perceiving meaning observations, Judging meaning decisions. For P types, basically when they’re making decisions they’re looking at themselves first and foremost; What do I think is the right decision here? P types also when making observations want to gather as many as possible. They don’t want to limit it and they don’t want to organise it either. The J types on the other hand, when they’re making decisions, they want to look around and get a good cross-section of what everyone else thinks is the right decision to make and then they’d make their decision based of that. When making observations, the J type limit the observations they take in and just mull over the few observations for a while and organise them over and over. This is why the J types generally to the outside world can look a bit more organised with the P types looking quite the contrary. Thank you very much if you made it this far. I hope you learnt something from this week’s Thursdays Talk. I you have any questions at all you can reach out to us using the chat button in the bottom right corner or you could leave it in the comment section below. If you like what you read today please share it with a friend and if you are new here I’d be very grateful if you subscribed that way you’d be the first to receive a notification when the next post is published. Please do well to like this post and share it with a friend. Thank you very much again and have a blessed weekend ahead.P.S. I am an INFJ🙂, what about you?