We are all the same, but different! We have similarities as humans yet we have different preferences too. God has a sense of humor because he will connect our life with people you love who are different than you. We all heard the old saying that opposites attract.
Understanding personality types will help you understand yourself and relate to people who have different strengths and weaknesses. Have you heard someone describe themselves using letters like E or I, S or N, T or F, and J or P. One of each letter of the MBTI is paired to come up with a four-letter personality. What people are referring to is their personality type based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
The research and development of the questionnaire designed to identify a person's personality type, strengths, and preferences were developed by Isabel Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs. Today, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is one of the most widely used psychological instruments in the world.
By helping people understand themselves, Myers and Briggs believed that they could help people select occupations that were best suited to their personality types and lead healthier happier lives.
Based on the answers selected on the MBTI, people are identified as having one of 16 personality types. The goal of the MBTI is to allow you to further explore and understand your own personality including your likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, possible career preferences, and compatibility with other people.
The beautiful part of the MBTI is that no one personality type is "better" or "best" than the other. It isn't a tool designed to look for dysfunction, abnormality, or competency. Instead, its goal is simply to help you learn more about yourself. The questionnaire itself is made up of four different scales.
Extraversion (E) – Introversion (I)
The extraversion and introversion dichotomy describes how people respond and interact with the world around them.
Sensing (S) – Intuition (N)
This scale involves looking at how people gather information from the world around them.
Thinking (T) – Feeling (F)
This scale focuses on how people make decisions based on the information that they gathered from their sensing or intuition functions.
Judging (J) – Perceiving (P)
The final scale involves how people tend to deal with the outside world.
When you care about people, you take the time to learn more about the things they enjoy and the things they prefer. It matters to you that they enjoy spontaneity while you enjoy a detailed schedule. As an extravert, I’m blessed to have several kids who are introverts. It is important for me to understand their language of love and for me to speak their language.
After 20 years of using the MBTI to relate, get-a-long and mentor others, I can say that once you learn about yourself and learn about the preferences of others, your life will never be the same. You will go from being frustrated to fascinated about why people do what they do.
Visit www.LaNissirJames.com to take the official Myers Briggs Type Indicator.