How to correctly identify your personality type, aka, typology, is critical to tap into your authentic self. Your personality type can help you answer questions like: Who am I? What is my life purpose? Why am I drawn to certain people, places, and situations? Answering these important life questions can bring peace of mind, a more harmonious life flow, and enthusiasm in understanding yourself and your place in the world.
Personality Type Quizzes
I’ve spent the last few days taking free quizzes online, and I can tell you there are quite a few to choose from. After completing a handful of tests, I found the quiz at 16 Personalities to be the one that accurately identified my type. As an FYI, I’m a certified Myers-Briggs® Type instructor, and I’ve taken the type indicator test, so I’m confident in knowing my type. If you’re seriously interested in learning more, the Myers-Briggs® Type Indicator test is worth the $50. Or, if you keep on getting different assessment results click the button below for a 30-minute type assessment.
Even the Most Sophisticated Personality Tests can give False Results.
Here’s why I know this to be true. As part of the MBTI® certification class, we had to retake the indicator test halfway through the course. The second time I took the test it was way off. Seriously, it was the exact opposite of my type.
What I learned from that experience is what I believe happens to a lot of us. When I first took the test, I was excited, open-minded, and eager to start the course. The second time I took the quiz, I was in a bad mood, rushed, and breezed through the test without giving it the time and attention it needed. These factors made a huge impact. I got the results that reflected my mood, and I didn’t give the test the attention it deserved. Something to think about when taking any personality test, Myers-Briggs®, or others: it’s also a wonderful life lesson. To excel, you must devote time and energy to get the best results possible. Also, even with your best efforts, some of the tests I took online were more playful, hard to get accurate results.
Typology Quizzes Aren’t Always Correct
I’ve thought that many online quizzes may not be enough to fully identify your authenticity. My belief is based on the knowledge that random quizzes don’t consider your childhood, life stories and peer experiences, and country culture. How could they, these tests are for the masses, not personalized? Have you ever met a person who wasn’t influenced by their childhood? I come from a family of five, and I needed to scream to be heard; I continued this behavior ⏤ until the awareness that being loud isn’t necessary to be heard. Good thing I was an extrovert because loud came easily. It didn’t for my older sister who is an introvert. And please, know extrovert and introvert traits are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to identifying your personality type.
It can be challenging to pinpoint traumatic personal life experiences; we tend to put them on the shelf. The moments in time deeply affect life choices and often make identifying your type harder. What helps is understanding your foundational values, which are deeply embedded in your personality type. This may help you realize this trauma may not be yours to own.
Understand it’s not what your parents, family, or friends expect, nor is the conventions of society. What’s often the biggest hurdle is how you perceive yourself. I get people who say, “Oh, I’m this type, “yet their behaviors and functions indicate otherwise.
Yes, your perceptions are your reality, but I ask you to ponder whose perceptions they are? –Nina Zapala, Founder of Spiritual Personality Typing
Preferences and Functions is How to Identify Your Personality Type Correctly
Preferences
Many people become confused examining their four letters and seeing them as isolated traits versus a part of the whole. The MBTI® preferences are; introversion (I), extroversion (E), intuition (N), sensing (S), thinking (T), feeling (F), judging (J), and perceiving, (P). I explain preferences a bit further in my upcoming guidebook Unpack Your Personality©️ , Please know we use all eight functions. Still, we prefer to use one, above all others, as the others act as a supportive role.
Four Functions
Hidden in the eight preferences are four functions; intuition (N), sensing (S), which helps you gather information while thinking (T), and feeling (F) enables you to evaluate information, make decisions, and come to conclusions. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, believed introversion and extroversion are the two most essential traits. He deferred to these traits as the direction of energy and attention to a person’s environment. Being extroverted or introverted is often generalized as a personality bias. It’s much more complicated than an inward, focus to self, introversion (I), or outward attention, to the whole, extroverted (E).
Not only did Jung believe we are characteristically introverted or extroverted; the four functions mentioned above also exhibit an extrovert or introvert tag becoming eight functions (Si, Se, Ni, Ne, Ti, Te, Fi, Fe).
Can you see why discovering your personality type can be tricky?
A Typie-Tip
Here’s a typie-tip you may find helpful in further determining your type. Are you wondering what happened to the P and J preferences? Both perceiving (P) and judging (J) are extroverted or outward functions. This external focus complicates test results for introverts as they are inward functioning.
Make no mistake, the (J) and (P) preferences play an essential role in typology. Perceiving is central to information gathering using the functions of sensing and intuition. Judging is used for evaluating, making decisions, order, and structure, leveraging the thinking and feeling processes.
The Perceiving Functions
- Introverted Sensing (Si)
- Extroverted Sensing (Se)
- Introverted Intuition (Ni)
- Extroverted Intuition (Ne)
Judging Functions
- Introverted Feeling (Fi)
- Extroverted Feeling (Fe)
- Introverted Thinking (Ti)
- Extroverted Thinking (Te)
As you look at your four-letter test results, understand the two middle letters will take you on a deep dive into your personality type. You can learn more about this in a previous blog post where I identify my type, the Curious traveler, getting into this topic in further detail.
A Spiritual Take on Personality Typing
My 20-plus years in the travel industry made it clear relationships, to self and beyond, need to be grounded in a complete understanding of foundational values, nurtured in spirituality. It’s why I believe combining a spiritual practice with typology is the path to self-actualization, untold personal growth, and a lifetime of happiness.
Relationship to Self Using Personality Typing and Spirituality
One of the many reasons I’m super excited to introduce you to Unpack Your Personality©️ because it’s puts you on the road of discovery. It provides a look at what makes you unique, your original self, and shows you that what stops you are aspects of your personality that need tweaking. If you don’t know the intimate basics of your typology, you’ll be looking to fulfill your externally, which keeps you continuously searching for something that’s out of reach. Here’s a thought, what if your soul’s purpose is to develop a relationship with self to help you identify:
- Your external life purpose, the reason for our existence here on Earth ⏤ career, life path, purpose, and now travel,
- To see your life as a quest to explore the hidden jewels that await discovery, leading you to live a life deliberately expressing your potential, ever-evolving, and always exciting,
- Your genuine voice, a communication style that comes with ease; conscious, open, and receptive,
- Accept life tsunamis, as personal gifts to spiritually awaken and a time of personal growth,
- Becoming self-reliant, leaving behind others’ expectations and the trappings of external needs, while forging your own path for a renewed life, leading to the authentic self.
How to Correctly Identify Your Personality Type
I hope you’ll see that personality typing is the doorway to understanding your Divine Self. Once you open the door and step inside, your whole world can shift into a life that’s soul feed. Everyone has a pitch, from religious leaders to educators to loved ones, even travel marketers. We all have an agenda. It’s not bad, but knowing your personality helps you navigate life with more peace and harmony. You’ll have a new lease on life. You’ve broken away from sheepdom because you’re an original, not to be copied or want to copy anyone else.
Looking For More
What did you learn? Are you inspired to learn more about your personality type? Travel is so much more than a selfie, good food, and company. I believe it to be a spiritual expression, a university for self-growth, a time for vulnerability and courage, to unleash your foundational values ⏤your personality pillars. 🙏
If you’re wondering how to tap into the power of your personality, your personal reality stayed tuned. I’m developing a fresh approach to personality typing, taking typology on the open road. I’ll be using travel as the classroom setting as I believe spiritual expressions should also be packed right beside the sunscreen and sunnies.
In my humble opinion, it’s one of the best paths to rethink personality typing as you know it today. You’ll realize, the Universe assigned you a Divine Soul and embellished it with a personality blueprint. You’re here to fully discover you’re authentic self and share your beautiful soul on the world stage. OK, in your backyard is just as beautiful.
My Intention
As a course changer and a new path maker, I’m always looking for ways to upend the status quo, and change convention. I believe the magic of travel is in the unknowingness. The unknowingness is precisely what you need to look past what you think you know, shatter irrelevant expectations, and bring to life your authentic self, your truth. I hope this blog challenges the way you look at travel and yourself. I want you to embrace the challenges, aka triggers, that lie on the road ahead as they reveal unconsciousness, hidden aspects of your authentic self.
Know, triggers stimulate awareness. When you become aware, you take inspired action – or remain asleep. If you stay asleep, there is no forward motion. When you decide to take action, a mind shift takes place. A new self-truth emerges, along with a new life path, and a new lease on life manifests.
JOIN THE REVOLUTION
Are you ready to be your own new path maker? If so I’d love to see you on Pinterest, Instagram, or Linkedin, but the best way to feel a part of this community is by subscribing; I’m debating on a newsletter or quarterly magazine? What do you prefer? I love a good magazine. 🥰
I look forward to building a community of seekers—individuals who want to know their truth and shine brighter in the world. My work is for those who desire to become a positive force in the world. And I’m up for whatever it takes to make this happen.
