Okay, where are my personality inventory people????
Nothing to Hold You Back: Your Personality Means Your Success
When it comes to succeeding in life, introspection is a powerful catalyst to ensuring your success. Thankfully, today you have access from the comfort of your home to powerful and proven personality test technology that until now was only used in large corporations, psychological circles, and education settings.
If you want to know more about yourself, you can spend as little as 15 minutes taking a test that will give you tremendous insight into your own psyche. You’ll learn about both positive and negative factors of your personality that affects all aspects of your life.
Once you learn these parts of your personality, you can work toward actually changing the negatives. You can also find ways to work around the negatives so that you can accentuate the positive aspects of your personality to reach more success than you ever thought possible.
About The Myers & Briggs Test
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®), heavily influenced by Carl Jung’s work on “Psychological Types” published in 1923, was created by a mother and daughter pair: Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs conducted a study of personality types, due to Katherine’s curiosity of personality types influenced by her daughter’s fiancé’s different personality. Publishing the first finished questionnaire in 1943, it’s been updated and changed over the years to more match not only the times but also new insights into personality that has developed along with the advancement of computer technology.
The test was designed to determine, based on Carl Jung’s four dichotomies:
What Type of Energy You Have
The type of energy you have is categorized as either an extrovert, more commonly spelled extrovert, or an introvert. While you may be a combination of the two, typically you will lean to one side or the other. Extraversion can be described by the way you do things. Extraverts are gregarious, active, and enthusiastic. They are expressive with their feelings and like to initiate activities. Whereas introverts are more likely to stand back and be more contained. They are more likely to wait for someone to impart information on them than engage in small talk and can be very reflective and quiet preferring more intimate settings.
How You Gather Data
Another thing the four dichotomies look at is how you gather data about the world. You may be sensing, or you may be intuitive. What this means is that if you’re a sensing individual you think in more concrete, realistic and practical ways about the world. You are more likely to rely on traditional ways of doing things as well as your experience of how the world works. Whereas, if you are a more intuitive person you tend to go with your gut when making choices and gathering data. You are also more able to use your imagination to decide how things work because you are good at envisioning things in an abstract way. This enables you to come up with original ideas that others might not consider.
How You Make Decisions
With decision making, Jung believed that people were thinking or feeling or a combination of the two but usually leaned to one side on how they make decisions. Thinking people are logical and reasonable. However, if you’re one of these types you can be critical and hard. You tend to ask a lot of questions. Whereas if you’re a feeling decision maker you will use your innate ability of empathy, compassion and acceptance to make choices that align with your accommodating and tender personality.
How You Live Your Life
As you’re living your life you may be the type of person who is either judging or perceiving. If you’re a judging person you are very systematic, scheduled and methodical. You like to get started early and will typically choose a method that allows for more planning than your perceiving counterparts who are more open, casual and spontaneous. Perceiving people tend to be more likely to need a little push or outside pressure such as a deadline to get things done than the judging personality.
Once you understand these four dichotomies it makes it easier to understand how the test works to determine your personality. But, you may still wonder why you should take the test. Let’s go over a few aspects of that.
Who Uses The Test?
Usually, the test is used in education, career counseling, team building, professional development and life coaching. Individuals can use the test as well to help gain insight into their lives as they choose their life path.
Why Do They Use the Test?
It’s used in any area that addresses the need for either an individual or a team to function better in life by using introspection and self-study to help you make better choices, enhance positive traits and learn import tools to deal with negative personality traits.
How Does the Test Help Achieve Success?
The test helps give you new insight and awareness about your personality that you might not have otherwise. Organizations and groups can learn to work better together by sharing each other’s results openly.
How Can the Test Help an Individual?
You will have many “aha” moments as you read your results. You’ll learn which career path is best for you, and even how to enhance the good aspects of your personality while turning potential negative factors into positives.
Learning as much as you can about yourself is something everyone should seek to do. You may feel that this is silly since, after all you are –you—and you think you know yourself well enough. But, the truth is, taking this personality test and getting the results can change your life and set you up for untold success if you let it.
Let’s go over the 16 different personality types that will help guide your career choices and help you make better life choices if you read and study your results.
Hello, World!
Overview of the 16 Different Personalities According to Myers Brigg
The Analytical Personality Types
INTJ – “The Architect”
As an INTJ, your ideal career due to your planning capability and big-picture thinking should involve business leadership and project management roles. Your ability to break down projects into step-by-step plans that others can follow is ideal for managing teams and even entire businesses. Whether you’re an entrepreneur running your own business, a project manager, or a business manager you will excel due to your ability to make decisive decisions and strategically develop solutions to problems with big-picture thinking.
If you’re one of the 2 percent to have this personality type you have a firm belief that everything boils down to attitude and planning. With a penchant for making detailed plans and backup plans, at work you might want to be clear about which plans your team should follow so that there isn’t any confusion by setting up a system for the team to follow for everything from brainstorming to putting ideas into action.
You also need to be aware that with your habit of making contingency plans, you are still somewhat idealistic because you are confident that you can devise plans for any issue and solve any problem without help from others. It’s important to keep this in perspective and realize that if you’re working as a team, you will need help from them. You’ll need to avoid focusing so much on your own vision that you avoid listening to your team as team collaboration can add a lot to any idea and ultimately improve the results.
Tips: Accept your personality and toss out any notion of working in a structured environment. Try to let go of your tendency to be overly analytical which can come off as arrogant and judgmental. Since you are truly a person who can do anything due to your skills in all areas, choose something that lets your quick imagination and strategic mind to shine. Look into becoming an Online Marketing Manager to put all your positive traits to work.
INTP – “The Logician”
As an INTP you have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and prefer to work alone as a freelancer in such fields as technical writing, data analysis, software development, and research alone or in small groups. You are an innovative, idea machine. You love coming up with theoretical methods and concepts about any project or problem you face. You’re drawn to scientific, analytical ideals in the abstract. However, where you excel in coming up with amazing ideas, you aren’t so good at implementation and desperately need someone to help you with this aspect of your work.
You’re still a self-driven perfectionist with high standards, even though you need that extra push from outside your own mind to ensure that you get to the implementation point of any project instead of continuing to generate more ideas. In other words, you need to watch out for shiny object syndrome and stick to your plan of action and career choice to reach success. You’ll need to watch out for appearing condescending to your group due to your tendency to use others as sounding boards without taking into account their needs.
In some ways, you’re like the stereotypical “absent-minded professor” You have so many ideas that come to you at all hours of the day and night that you need to keep organized and act on. Finding a partner to offer accountability will help you put your genius to work so that you can see each project through to success.
Tips: Even if you’ve never written a word, consider how being a writer might work for your personality. You can use your ability to think outside the box, analyze data, and imaginative ability to write copy or even books. This type of career will enable you to stay private and avoid issues with having to follow too many rules and guidelines.
ENTJ – “The Commander”
As an ENTJ you have a keen sense of intelligence, determination, and self-confidence. You’re a fabulous communicator who excels at keeping other people on track, helping them get things done. Due to these skills, you will thrive best as a business owner, manager, leader, executive, entrepreneur, strategist, lawyer, and judge or executive.
You’re strong-willed and would not thrive in slow-paced positions focused on everyday administrative tasks. For example, you’d be very unhappy as a secretary or subordinate required to do routine daily tasks. You much prefer to be the overseer or manager focusing on the big picture. If you had to work in an office where you aren’t the executive, being an office manager would be more of your style.
While you have above-par communication skills and you’re excellent at sharing your vision with others, sometimes you can come off as dominant and overbearing due to your inability to sugarcoat things. Incidentally, you don’t really want people to blow smoke toward you either. Instead, you appreciate honest and constructive criticism.
You also have no patience with others when you believe they are sloppy, lazy and worse, incompetent. You can be quite nasty to these people instead of considering whether or not they’re in the right position to do a good job.
Tips: Don’t let the need for more education put you off from reaching your ideal career goals. Learn to be more patient while harnessing your energy, efficiency, and ability to think clearly. This will allow you to be a charismatic leader.
ENTP – “The Debater”
As an ENTP, you are full of intellectual curiosity which in turn gives you unlimited ideas for solutions to problems both technical and intellectual. Your ability to see all sides of an argument and love for playing devil’s advocate would make you an excellent lawyer, psychologist, analyst, or research scientist.
Due to your disdain for dealing with practical matters, you are most suited to be one part of a two-person partnership – as long as the partner carries the ability to follow through with your ideas and is on board with helping you stay focused. Other careers that you can choose from are engineering, acting, and photography.
If you can control your urge to debate everything because believe or not some people don’t enjoy it as much as you do, you can be a natural leader who is quick on their feet and who inspires others to develop sound and logical systems. You might love working as a life coach.
Tip: You don’t have to be a lawyer to be successful even though your personality is perfect for becoming a litigator. Instead, you could harness your knowledge and charisma to become a life or business coach.
The Diplomatic Personality Types
INFJ – “The Advocate”
As an INFJ you’re an extremely rare find as less than 1 percent of the population. You like to be productive and creative and will find joy in meaningful work in healthcare or counseling. You might also enjoy being a life coach, author, or blogger. The important thing to you, more than money, is the ability to feel as if you’re helping people and making the world a better place.
In fact, you’re most likely to find satisfaction in starting your own business so that you can live your morals and values and not someone else’s. However, due to your soft-spoken nature, you tend to see subordinates as equals and that can make leading difficult people hard or even impossible. But, since you’re not really the analytic type and you dislike daily routine work you will have to go outside of your comfort zone to find a way to lead.
While you can be a strong-willed scrapper for a cause you care about you tend to put taking care of others ahead of taking care of yourself which can lead to burnout. Since being an entrepreneur is the career choice most likely to bring you happiness, your ability to let love and compassion rule your choices will pay off in the long run as long as you learn to speak up for yourself as much as you do for others without overreacting.
Entrepreneurship though, will only work if you can find a business that aligns with your morals and values, as well as allowing you to make the world a better place. But, you may need to hire a life coach yourself to help you narrow down exactly what you want to do. You have such a hard time figuring it out due to wanting to do so much. But, with your decisive nature, if you get help figuring it out you’ll end up on the right path to find success and happiness.
Tips: Even if you’re in a 9 to 5 career right now, you can break out if you want to. Your creativity and insightful nature will help you become an effective and successful blogger if that’s something you want to try. What’s great is you can do it while you work. Just be sure to ignore your perfectionistic tendencies to help you avoid getting stuck before you realize success.
INFP – “The Mediator”
As an INFP your idealist and passionate nature can be hidden behind your reserved, private and self-conscious attitude causing misunderstanding about you as a person. To be truly happy you need to find work that allows your creative side to flourish while helping others; money doesn’t matter to you as much as the feeling of happiness. Work that can be done mostly alone, as an individual is most attractive to you such as being a writer or actor.
As a leader, you have a serious problem with any type of confrontation due to your disdain for conflict. This hate of conflict can actually cause you a lot of problems contributing to the fact that people have a hard time getting to know and trust you. Understanding this fact can help you work with the best parts of yourself in such a way that people finally start “getting” you.
You’re fabulous when working on projects. You’re open-minded and flexible, and you’re good at helping people get things done. Even if you have to do a bunch of boring tasks and drudge work, if you can convince yourself that there is an ultimate good in the work, you’re happy to do it. In addition to your above-average communication skills, this might make you an excellent Virtual or Personal Assistant.
A downside to your personality is that you dislike conflict so much that you might do things you don’t like doing longer than you should. You’ll need to be careful not to allow people to take advantage of your deep desire to help others. You’re a good communicator so use those skills to stand up for yourself. Say no to work that makes you feel worthless so that you don’t get depressed and isolate yourself to avoid conflict.
Tips: If you’re going to be a writer, you’ve got to let go of your adverse feelings about criticism and realize it’s not all meant personally. Even if someone disagrees with something you said, it’s not always about you. Use your open-mindedness to get along with others.
ENFJ – “The Protagonist”
As an ENFJ, you love helping and motivating people. Thankfully your resourcefulness and likable personality make it easy for people to trust you enough to let you help them. Some professions you will find happiness and success in include politics, coaching, teaching, team management, event coordinator, sales rep, and consultant.
Anything that lets you help people over the long term using your eloquent communication skills and natural leadership ability, without having to think too fast on your feet is an ideal career choice to you. For example, while you like helping people you would not be great at being a first responder due to your inability to think fast on your feet.
If you were in a leadership position you would have a lot of trouble giving criticism to subordinates because you hate conflict so much. Instead, you’re more likely to try to help them turn their ways around because you’re so interested in their well-being. Though, with hard cases, you may get over-involved. You have to guard yourself against becoming obsessed with fixing things for others.
Sometimes in your desperation to help people, yet avoid confrontation, you can become passive-aggressive to ensure you meet your goal of helping the person. In addition, your need for appreciation and gratitude can stifle your ability to help people even though you mean well and really do care about others. Your motto can be said to be: people over data.
Tips: You have the perfect personality to be a life coach. However, you cannot allow the failure of your clients to cause a dent in your self-image. After all, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.
ENFP – “The Campaigner”
As an ENFP, you’re a free spirit, the life of the party, and a gregarious communicator that people love. You’ll love a career that helps you make social connections and keeps your energy up. Careers like journalism, acting, reporting, science, service, counseling, teaching, politics as well as researching interesting topics will fit well with your personality as long as the topics are interesting to you and each day is a little different.
You love learning so much that you find it hard to settle on one career in which to seek success. A common problem with this is that you stop doing something just as it’s getting ready to take off and become successful. You need to stick it out; instead of stopping each time, you get bored so you can feel your own success.
You’re not a big fan of doing daily tasks like paperwork, data entry, and bookkeeping or even cleaning out the dishwasher, you want every task you do to have deep meaning. Plus you really dislike rules and will often, in spite of your people-pleasing nature, buck the system when rules are in place.
As someone who is a terrific listener who can offer insightful advice to others after talking to them for a while, you hate being micromanaged because you think it means the manager doesn’t trust you. You also will not micromanage people but tend to want to encourage people by making them like you and want to please you.
Tips: Your popularity quotient will make you awesome at becoming a Vlogger. You can do that using YouTube.com, or another video format on a blog. Just don’t over-schedule yourself or bite off more than you can chew.
The Sentinel Personality Types
ISTJ – “The Logistician”
As an ISTJ you have a lot of company since this is thought to be the most common personality type. You have a lot of integrity and are very dedicated to those you care about. You enjoy positions that are traditional, have rules, and standards, and allow you to take responsibility. You’re great at meeting deadlines, as long as someone else sets them. You’re highly uncomfortable with entrepreneurship, but it doesn’t mean you can’t learn. You might consider starting with a work-at-home job or a Virtual Assistant position.
You’re great at coming up with plans of action to get you from point A to point Z in any project. You can be super intolerant of other personality types who you work with. Keep this in mind as you work with others. People may look at a situation differently than you and that’s perfectly OK.
You love working alone and on your own terms. This makes you a great entrepreneur and business owner or manager. You can be honest to the core; even overly ethical if that is possible, taking the blame for things that perhaps could be shared with others. This could cause problems for you, and even make you lose jobs if you’re not careful.
Due to your high ethical standards, it’s hard for anyone to meet them. In this case, you often find yourself totally alone and isolated from others. It’s imperative that you learn to take care of yourself to avoid additional stress in your life.
Tips: Whatever career choice you choose you’ll need to try to let go of your stubborn nature in order to avoid self-destructing. Whether you choose to work for someone else or work for yourself, it’s important that you try to be more sensitive to others.
ISFJ – “The Defender”
As an ISFJ you’re very well-suited to help others. You’ll enjoy working with customers directly as well as helping executives in support positions. Careers in medicine, academics or charity work are especially good for you. While you’re not likely to seek out a leadership position that you deserve, you should consider it. Chances are you are more than capable of doing the job due to your vast skillset.
Altruistic and generous to a fault, you’re a true “do-gooder” who is humble and kind. Even though you are technically introverted you are well trained socially to network and meet people. You do like meeting people, and even being around people, but to stay on top of your game you need to take a break occasionally to be alone and recharge.
Since you rarely take credit for work other personality types will take advantage of you. Using your skills to get ahead, leaves you behind. You need to learn when and how to say no. Let people know that you have too much on your plate. Just because you can do everything doesn’t mean you should.
You have the ability to understand others and be open-minded with people, making teaching a great career choice for you. Teaching doesn’t have to be in a traditional format, today with the advent of online schools you can find a position teaching online or even create your own courses and sell them via a course delivery system.
Tips: Because you are a people pleaser who likes serving others and you don’t take credit for your hard work you may not be able to fully experience success. However, you will enjoy everything you do. Let go of your fear of change and start your own business. Everyone knows you’re more than capable.
ESTJ – “The Executive”
As an ESTJ, you’re very involved with tradition and order. Right, and wrong seems black and white to you. You are very honest and dedicated and love leading others by example. You might find your best career by becoming a community organizer, as that would fit your needs to help others.
As someone dedicated to dignity and leadership, you don’t like to switch jobs much and will stay as long as you can with one employer. If you start a business, you’ll be 100 percent dedicated to it and not distracted by shiny objects or promises of riches from gurus. You’ll stick to it, and work hard to become a success.
When working with others, the biggest problem you have is that co-workers see you as inflexible and unwilling to listen. You get so hyper-focused on one goal, one vision, and one way to do something you’re not willing to change. But, since you’re highly intelligent and work best with facts, with practice, you should be able to adjust this part of your personality and actively work on your listening skills.
You’re great at sorting out details and making complicated tasks easier for yourself and others but you fail to understand why no one will listen to you. It’s important for you to realize that some people are different and that it’s okay to be that way. If you want to be a true leader, you need to accept people as they are. Consider their needs and personalities and find a way to work together to meet your common goals.
Tips: You have many terrific qualities, but your judgmental behavior and inability to relax can hold you back; not because of lack of skill, but due to your perception of others. Learn to connect better with people and the sky is the limit of where you can go.
ESFJ – “The Consul”
As an ESFJ you’re very popular, well-organized, and altruistic. You love rules and authority whether you’re in charge or not. You’re well-suited for administrative work and accounting due to the order and rules required, but you also like people so you need to do these things as a self-employed individual.
A lover of routine you like setting up or following strict systems to get things done in an orderly way. For example, you likely use a project management system to keep you on track with any work that you’re doing. You have a lot of common sense so you don’t find technology scary to use at all.
Even though you’re not that accepting of other people’s differences, you do not like conflict and tend to try to be supportive and unite people. You love networking and consider it a joy rather than work. Even though you have a bad temper due to your tendency to stuff down feelings to avoid conflict, you are well-liked.
For the most part, you can enjoy almost any type of career choice, as long as you get to interact on some level with people. To do that, you need to be more accepting of differences and non-traditional ideas.
Tips: You have a great mixture of both outgoingness and the ability to analyze data. This puts you in a unique position where you can do all the analytic jobs yet, also deal with people – both things you love. This makes entrepreneurship perfect for you.
The Exploring Personality Types
ISTP -- “The Virtuoso”
As an ISTP you love taking things apart and putting them back together. You love people and excel at working with others and networking. You have a high regard for freedom, and hold your principles dear. You’re a great problem solver, a skill found in mechanics, engineers, bloggers and graphic designers. Thankfully, most of these careers can be done as a freelancer.
You prefer hands-on experience over book knowledge. You like being different for the sake of being different and will try anything once. Even though you like learning, it’s hard for you to stick to schoolwork due to your inability to focus.
Sometimes your behavior can be overblown and come off as insensitive. It can be difficult for you to find a company or organization to work with due to your unpredictability. If you can get a handle on your tendency to go too far in a crowd and harness your creative powers for good, you can be a great business owner.
The ability to call your time your own is imperative for you to be happy and successful. However, you need to learn how to plan for the long term if you want to continue to be productive and run a successful business.
Tips: Because of the fact that you’re able to prioritize well, and you’re good at seeing the big picture, you will make a great freelancer. You’re self-motivated, optimistic, and very capable of doing any position on your own from your home office.
ISFP – “The Adventurer”
As an ISFP you are naturally born artistic. You crave the ability to make your world more attractive and easier to live in. You will excel, given the time, as a teacher, counselor, artist, musician or photographer. But, not working 9 to 5 with someone else. Instead, you must freelance or consult to be truly happy.
You love learning new things but find it difficult to choose a career due to not wanting to spend the time on long-term education. You need creative freedom more than things and money so you’re not overly motivated to work hard to achieve something you feel you can learn on your own.
Non-traditional, spontaneous, and unpredictable describe you. However, you’re still an introvert who needs to go into your cocoon for a while before returning as a beautiful, colorful social butterfly. Your passion is clear, and you are an expert networker who can work the system to get your way. Sometimes you come off as self-centered, selfish, and manipulative; however, it’s usually directed toward doing good and not being hurtful.
Not only are you terrible at taking criticism, but due to your dislike of conflict you’re not likely to lead by direct confrontation but rather by charming them into submission. As a freelancer, you’ll need to find someone who can make you accountable so that your poor self-image doesn’t get in the way of your success.
Tips: You’re way too independent to be held down to a 9 to 5 job. You will be miserable being tied down. Take the jump and work toward having your own business and you’ll be most happy. Take the time to choose something that you are willing to stick to for a long time though. You can’t “job hop” when you have a business.
ESTP – “The Entrepreneur”
As an ESTP, you love being the center of attention and know how to get your way. This is why you make such a great entrepreneur. In spite of your networking prowess, you’re better at doing than talking about doing. What’s more, everyone wants to be on your team. They know a winner when they see it.
You love taking chances and gambling but you rarely lose. You have a deep dislike for too much organization, which can be a deterrent to your success. You’ll do best with hands-on learning which you can find it you look, so don’t give up.
You have super abilities such as being able to notice social cues easier than others. If you’re talking to someone and they are acting “funny” you know it and you have the ability to talk about something else, drawing the person into your web and winning them over.
Don’t get caught up and distracted by what’s happening right now, forgetting about the future entirely. Place your focus on one thing at a time so that you can experience success.
Tips: Of course, with this personality profile you’re built to become an entrepreneur, but you must be patient and structured even if you need to bring on a partner to do it. Success can be yours if you’re willing to let go of your defiant nature and work with others.
ESFP – “The Entertainer”
As an ESFP, you’re a born party planner, actor, tour guide, travel agent, life coach, or any career that involves being highly connected to people. You need the immediate feedback of humans to feel accomplished and would be miserable stuck in an office all day in a cubicle dealing with numbers.
You love living in the moment and that’s where you are happiest. Too much planning for the future can make you jumpy and depressed. You have a magnetic personality. You love the spotlight so much that you can sometimes get carried away but you’re so charismatic and sensitive to others that most people love you in spite of it.
Sometimes you can be too focused on immediate gratification and not focused enough on the future. It’s challenging to do repetitive tasks and stick to any one thing for long even when it’s very important to do it for your future. You need someone to provide accountability so that you can harness all your energy to become more focused and do awesome things in the world.
Tips: One thing you need to realize is that every job has something boring about it. Every job has paperwork. Every job needs long-term planning. Every job needs your full focus. These are skills you need to work on in order to be successful, regardless of which career you choose.
Your Next Step
If you haven’t already, go take the test to find your personality type. The results may just surprise you. Be completely honest while taking the test. Do not answer the questions based on how you “wish” you were but instead on how you really are. Being successful starts with being aware of whom you truly are so do yourself a favor and answer the questions honestly.
Look at your strengths and weaknesses. Write them down. Look for ways to overcome your weaknesses. Learn how to make better use of your strengths. Remember that a personality test is only as good for you as what you do with it. If you just read it and don’t put into action the suggestions you will continue to struggle to find success, but if you truly work it, nothing can hold you back.
Self-introspection is an important part of your success because you only have control over one thing in your life, and that is you. You are responsible for your future, and only you can make the choice to put the information you’ve learned into action.