Discover Your Personality Type & Why it Matters
- Madelyne Harris
- Jul 8, 2025
- 3 min read
Knowing your personality type can be valuable for understanding yourself and others, improving communication, and guiding better decision-making in personal development, career choices, and interpersonal relationships. Exploring one's self for personal growth and climbing Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs toward self-actualization is an expansion process but it can also be a little uncomfortable. It's easy to float along, riding our strengths and capitalizing on what comes easy to us and it's not always a fun process to look at the shadow side of ourselves, the part we try to hide from the world, even ourselves sometimes, and face areas in our personality that require more work. Personal growth and awareness will be limited if you are not willing to look at every angle of who you are, without judgment.
The judgment part might be tricky for some but we're going to do our best to be open to
looking more deeply at ourselves from a neutral position.
Consider the following questions:
Do you know what motivates you?
Do you know your communication style?
Are you aware of your default behaviors?
Are you ok with conflict or do you shy away from it?
Does your career align with your personality? How do you know?
Understanding your personality type can help identify motivating factors, including those that may not be immediately apparent. Self-awareness is the first and perhaps the most important benefit that comes from identifying your personality type and how you operate internally and within your environment. Having an expanded awareness of your strengths, weaknesses, internal and external motivations, and default behaviors can provide insight into how you operate and why. It can also provide insight into how you react under stress, determine preferences and proclivities, and identify what environments you thrive in versus what might be draining your energy.
Identifying your personality type can provide guidance on relationship compatibility. Some personality types just don't work well together resulting in excessive conflict. We all have different love languages, conflict styles, social needs, and interests. I know some might say opposites attract, and that can be true, but it's generally not without concessions. Some personality types are more introverted and empathic while others are outgoing and bombastic. Recognizing your specific patterns allows you to challenge your blind spots while being more aware of how you interact with others and adapt accordingly.
Certain personality types are drawn to certain career roles so it's important to work within your natural. For instance, an extroverted personality type would likely not thrive in careers where they are more isolated, like research. Sales would be a good option where they can put their natural gregarious vibrancy to work. Likewise, a more introverted person might find being a server or working with customers extremely exhausting. Being armed with self-awareness can help guide you to careers that align with your values, energy level, and talents.
One's personality type should be compatible with relationships, careers, communication, conflict styles, hobbies, and intellectual pursuits. For entertainment and self-growth purposes, I've attached three personality assessment tools for consideration; the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Big Five (Ocean), and the Enneagram.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological types, is a psychological assessment tool that suggests that people have inherent preferences and functions in how they perceive and operate in the world, make decisions, and interact with others. The MBTI identifies 16 personality types representing four areas: Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I), Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N), Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F), and Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P).
Click here to take the Myers-Briggs assessment
The Big Five Personality Test (OCEAN)
The Big Five Personality Test (OCEAN) measures an individual's standing on five broad traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The Big Five helps us understand individual differences in personality traits that can influence how people perceive and respond to the world around, them and relate to others.
The Enneagram
The Enneagram is a personality theory that describes the nine primary strategies we all use to relate and interact with the world. The Enneagram assessment tool scores 9 traits: perfectionist, giver, achiever, individualist, investigator, skeptic, enthusiast, challenger, and peacemaker. All three assessments test similar characteristics and traits but categorize them in different ways. You don't have to pick just one. Take all three tests and see how each one resonates with you for an expanded sense of self-awareness.
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