“You either walk inside your story and own it, or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” Brené Brown
Knowing yourself allows you to walk inside your story.
It doesn’t mean giving yourself the excuse to stop growing or changing. But it DOES mean giving yourself permission to work within who you are.
Working within who we are means we get to drink less, escape into TV less, eat-an-entire-tray-of-brownies LESS. We don’t feel the need to numb our feelings when our choices are consistent with what we value.
From a parenting.com article that I’m a bit obsessed with—
“When we encourage you to focus on joy, we’re not talking about a flash of momentary happiness. We’re talking about living in alignment with your deeply held values. When you make decisions based on your values (as opposed to what all the external voices in your life are telling you to do), something inside goes zing.”
Zing!
Knowing ourselves helps us ditch those pesky feelings of inadequacy and trade them in for more contentment. Who would turn THAT down??
But first, we’ve got to cultivate self-awareness.
Have you ever taken a personality test and then walked around on air, feeling so completely understood by a page on the internet that describes you to a T? This happens to me EVERY TIME I take one. 🙂 It feels good, right?
My friend Anne, a great resource (and self-proclaimed geek) when it comes to personality assessments, believes that knowing your personality type helps you manage day-to-day routines, keep a handle on your energy levels, and identify when you’re out of sorts and how to deal with it.
So that’s the why. Now what about the how?
These 5 iconic personality tests will help you get to know yourself, as an individual and in relation to those around you (why hello, husband!).
5 Personality Tests that Will Help You Live *ALL IN*
1. Myers-Briggs Test Indicator
The daddy of all personality tests. 🙂 Often used in corporate environments. Check here for more background on the test and what the different letters mean and here for a brief summary of all 16 personalities. The description of me (an INFJ) is eerily on point, and not surprisingly, my husband and I have no letters in common. 🙂 More on that to come!
Learning how you best receive love, as well as how other people in your life receive love, is HUGE! This was really helpful for my husband and I when were were about a year into marriage and were struggling with how to really connect and help each other feel loved. Game changer.
3. The Big Five
Created by psychologists, this one evaluates you based on five factors: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Take a version of it through Psychology Today.
4. The Enneagram
I’ve heard some lofty stuff about this centuries-old study of nine types of people. They say it takes some sustained introspection to decide which of the nine you are, but once you do, a whole world opens up, teaching you where you shine, where you struggle, and how you likely interact with the other people (other numbers) in your life.
This podcast, Confront Your Junk, is a great place to start if you’re interested.
5. Sanity Score
According to this NY Times blog post, Sanity Score is a “simple online quiz designed to assess aspects of your mental health, including your risk for depression, anxiety and other emotional disorders.” You do have to create an account, but it’s free.
I LOVE this concept for women who are wondering if they’re experiencing depression or anxiety but aren’t quite ready to book a psychiatrist. This is a great information-gathering first step (that you can take in your pajamas!).
5. Buzzfeed’s “Which ‘Friends’ character are you?”
What list of personality tests would be complete without figuring out whether you are a Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey, or Ross. (I’m a Rachel.)
I’d love to hear your experience or opinions on any of these tests! Which are you most familiar with? Do we have any superfans out there?
Erica, this has been on my heart so much lately! I am an INFJ, too!! I have been wanting to write about it (as it can be a very confusing and rare personality type) and this post has inspired me to do so. Thank you for writing this awesome post and for being inspiring as you always are! Oh, and for being an INFJ 🙂 Love it!
Hi Katie! I love that we are both INFJs! I think it’s totally within our personality type to write blogs like we do. The introspective kind. 🙂 I can’t wait to read and share your post, and I’m amazed (yet again) at our timing. It seems like we’re often on the same page with our thoughts, even when we haven’t talked about them!
Couldn’t agree more, my friend. On all of the above!
I am an INFJ and love personality tests. The information is so helpful in understanding how God made us and how we relate to His creation. My favorite test is StregthsFinder.
Ooh, thanks for pointing me to StrengthsFinder! I just looked it up, and I liked what I saw.
And I love that you’re an INFJ too! Not surprised!!
I love that StrengthsFinder focuses on maximizing where you’re already gifted. Now that I’ve read through the book, it’s also very fun to pick out the strengths of other people!
That quote about making decisions based on your morals….LOVE! Also I’m going to take all of these tests 🙂
Thanks for this post. The enneagram is very interesting, I am a 4 – the tragic romantic. Knowing this helps me appreciate the present instead of getting too stuck in the past and future.
Oooh, that’s so interesting, Heather! I don’t know as much about the enneagram types, but I can see how that name, “the tragic romantic” would have a hard time living in the present. I tend to romanticize the past and the future, too.
Thanks, lady. I really appreciate you reading and often popping in to comment. It makes my day!
I love this sort of thing, too!
When I was working on my M.Ed., I took the Myers-Briggs Test. My husband happened to take the test around the same time at work. What we discovered is that on one scale (how we make decisions), we’re COMPLETE opposites! And knowing this has helped tremendously in giving us insight into how the other person works. I try not to get frustrated by what I see as his utter indecisiveness now that I know he’s just wired that way 🙂
These personality tests can be great for personal insight, but taking them in conjunction with your spouse can raise a lot of fascinating points about your relationship, too!
Girl, your examples are exactly what I’m talkin about! Thank you! I LOVE the application with your husband. I’ve found it to be really freeing to just accept that my husband is (more often than not) wired to approach things differently than I am.
Thank you!
I love taking quizzes! And I usually push my husband to take the same ones so we can share, compare, and laugh. My craziest experience is that I always get different results when I’m pregnant. I haven’t taken any quizzes since my last pregnancy so I had to start with Friends and “this year” I’m Phoebe, even though I was hoping I’d end up as Monica and get my entire house cleaned and organized!
I absolutely love this post! I’m a sucker for a good quiz. I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test before, but the other tests are news to me.:) Thanks so much for the recommendations!
xo
i’m an infj too! i love personality tests! when i found out about infjs and being a type four i realized so much about myself and why i felt others never really understood me.
It makes me so happy to have INFJs popping out of the woodwork, especially since we are said to be a rare breed! Funny how sharing four letters can make you feel understood by another person. 🙂 It’s a good feeling. Thanks so much for commenting, Amanda!
So fun seeing a link to the Confront Your Junk podcast with Tsh! Thank you for including it. The Enneagram is different from other personality typing systems in that it focuses more on our motivations. It’s not easy to own up to our areas of weakness but it has been so healing and freeing for me to figure out my type.
Hi Leigh! So great to hear from you! I was meaning to point you to this post, but I’m glad you found it! I’ve been following your enneagram posts for a while now, and I really enjoyed the podcast…but I still had a bit of a hard time getting to the meat of it with my description. 🙂 I loved how you said it focuses more on motivations. THAT makes sense. Thank you! And thanks for pinning this, too! You and Anne really revitalized my interest in all things personality, and it has been really beneficial for me.
I’ve heard a decent amount of good stuff from the Myers-Briggs personality test, and I’ve definitely been meaning to put in on my to do list. I’m dying to know what the test says!I wouldn’t be surprised if my husband and I didn’t share any letters either 🙂
Haha, I love to hear about another pairing of opposites. #kindredcouples 🙂 The test I linked to only to only takes about 10 minutes, so definitely go for it!
(You have to have a certified Myers-Briggs person administer the real deal, but I hear that online version is pretty accurate too. It was for me!)
Doing some of these with the husband has been on my date night list of things to do since you wrote this post! We did it tonight and it was so great! So very interesting to see what we got and to discuss them. Very helpful and eye opening. Thanks for this post!
xoxo
For any weirdos like me who never watched Friends, there’s also a Jane Austen character quiz: http://www.strangegirl.com/emma/quiz.php
And I think a Disney princess one…you can google that link!
Enjoyed coming over from Tsh’s Cuppa Reads.
Awesome! Thanks so much for sharing this, Beth! And I hear that Friends is on Netflix these days, in case you want to dive in. 😉
I’m an INFJ! Now I know why I’m so totally different from everyone. Very alone all my life but glad to know I’m not alone. 🙂
I love your article! Are you familiar with Dr. Taylor Hartman’s COLOR CODE? It is the only personality theory (that I am aware of) that addresses MOTIVE… the others are all behavior based models. Motive gives you the “why” behind the “what, or in other words… why you do what you do. It is incredibly insightful, accurate and easy to remember. We are all born with an innate Driving Core Motive and it never changes… unlike behavior which does change over time and circumstances. The Color Code goes beyond just a personality assesment, in his books “The People Code” and “Color Your Future” Hartman gives us a design and plan for living a charactered life. I have a link to take the test on my website: https://www.motivesinmotion.com/applications/personality-test/about-color-code/
What a great resource, Carrie! Thank you! I actually think maybe my husband and I did this test when we were engaged. I love that it includes motivation. That makes me think it’s definitely time he and I filled out that test again!