Why You Absolutely Should Take A Personality Test

All 16 personality types

Calling all who are indecisive, and all who face a crossroad…lend me your ears!

In recent years, personality tests have become more common, especially in education. In some colleges, they are taken in ‘Cornerstone’ classes: full-semester courses designed with the pure intent to ease new students into the system and to help students find their calling in life. More than that, these personality tests are common in High Schools now; I took them twice before I graduated in 2018. At that moment, I saw them as nothing more than a waste of time — a stupid test the teachers wanted me to take for no real reason, thinking it probably wouldn’t even be accurate, anyway.

I was absolutely right, but for all the wrong reasons…

The world can be a miserable place. It’s scary, it’s rough, it’s challenging to get by, and for many, it requires a mindless grind that we are forced to do for possibly our entire adult lives. One of the only things that every single person on the planet can relate to, regardless of wealth or social standing, is moments of doubt, especially self-doubt. Whether you are a blue-collar worker or 1% of the 1%, there are moments where we have to make a choice; for some people like me, those choices can be frustrating and seemingly impossible to make. Of all the things in life that we can influence, the most significant one is that daily, endless grind, which is also the one that those in that 0.01% hit home. For many of them, they found a calling early in life; a passion, and so they went all-in. With an admitted bit of luck, these entrepreneurs from history: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc. created their respective fortunes.

The trick isn’t to get lucky and land on a great gig; the trick is to find out how to do what you are passionate about for a living. Yes, there may be some luck involved, and doing what you love doesn’t mean that you’ll be a billionaire someday; I know that I certainly don’t expect to. But through finding your strengths, weaknesses, desires, and dislikes, you will be better off than the majority of society when it comes to finding your calling in life. One of the best (and easiest) ways to start figuring that out is through taking a personality test.

Some of my stellar search results for “personality test.”

No, I am not referring to the Facebook “quiz” your mother takes that steals and sells her data, nor the BuzzFeed assessment that answers ‘“which F.R.I.E.N.D are you?” I am referring to The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the state-of-the-art personality assessment, whose website states that they have “70+ years of research behind (them)”. By answering their questions honestly, you will get the most accurate reading of your personality. No, it is not some B.S. pseudoscience, nor is it a Facebook quiz. The Myers-Briggs assessment is supported by years of research, perfection, and review by those who have taken it.

But why should you take it? I’ve told you what it is, but why should you care? Well, this assessment can be hugely beneficial to you if you have any sense of doubt in yourself, or you are at all uncertain about who you are and what you want to do. If nothing else, the assessment can show you if you are an introvert or an extrovert, or if you are a logical thinker or an emotional thinker. That information can be helpful for you in terms of discovering yourself and finding the things that you succeed at. If you are like me, though, well, I’ll get to that.

For another website with a more friendly theme, try 16personalities. This is the website where I have always taken these assessments. You will be given one of 16 results, all of which are shown in the thumbnail of this article; each personality type has a name like “The Architect”, “The Advocate”, or “The Defender”. I am not going to explain every possible answer here, as that is time-consuming and open for you to see for yourself on their website; they can explain it better than me after all. This assessment is not several hours long, just a few minutes and you’ll have it done with. But the result of those few minutes can amaze you if you answer honestly. Don’t believe me? I didn’t either.

Let’s take a look at my personal history with this assessment…

Recently, I had to retake the assessment for a cornerstone class at my local college. Before taking the assessment, I had the mindest of doubt: “This thing is B.S., it’s not gonna get it right”, my internal monologue told me. The trick is, you have got to be honest with yourself. Your results will not be accurate if you do not put down the raw truth about yourself. I’ll give you an example:

On the previous occasions when I had taken this assessment, some questions would come up along the lines of, “Are you the life of the party?” or “Do you find yourself more comfortable working on your own or in groups?”. I put strongly agree with these questions, not because they were correct (they weren’t), but because I wanted them to be true. I wanted to be the popular guy, yeah, but I just wasn’t, and it took time for me to accept that I never will be. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my results were different from the previous time taking the assessment.

Since I put false answers in, my results were non-applicable to me. I thought that the test was stupid, and it got me wrong, so I went back to mainly ignoring my schoolwork and played videogames instead.

I put what I wanted to be true, rather than what was true.

Cut to earlier this year (January 2020). I am taking a ‘cornerstone’ class at my local state college (because I didn’t apply myself in High School), and we are all told that we will be taking a personality test so that we can find out what careers would be good for us. So now, I am about to take the test for the third time, and I go into it having the same mindset as when I was 16 or 17. I believed that this was a waste of my time, and I would be better off watching YouTube at home. But no. That didn’t happen; because this time, I answered honestly.

This assessment has changed the course of my life.

My actual result: INFP-T; The Turbulent Mediator. The A/T is unique to 16personalities and says if you are turbulent or assertive…I am extremely turbulent

This time, what I saw made sense. What I saw wasn’t wrong, it was me! So, this time I did more than reading the introduction. I read every single tab: friendships, relationships, career ideas, strengths, and weaknesses, all of it. It was 100% me. Never before in my life, not even with my wonderful girlfriend, had I felt this understood.

“Okay, where are you going with this? I only get 5 free articles a month after all!” I hear you asking me.

Where I am going is this: if you are anything at all like me:

• If you are indecisive and can seldom make up your mind,
• If you find yourself feeling out of place in society,
• If you are open-minded,
• If you are at a crossroads (talking mostly to the young people here) in life where you have to pick a major, or a career, or anything else and are unsure,
• If you are too impractical and you lack common sense sometimes,
• If you have only a few friends, or even just one, yet they are all you need,
• If you have ideas but don’t know how to apply them remotely,
• If you are an emotional person who feels overwhelmed by the world,
• If you are absolutely, completely, impossibly lost on what to do with your life, yet you also think you would be interested in X subject,
• Or if you already know your plan in life; if you are curious about what kind of person you are,

Take the assessment.

My point is this: if any of these apply to you, please, for both of our sakes, take the personality test and be honest with yourself!!! If you do these things, you will possibly feel understood like never before. It will be a massive relief, at least, it was for me and also my girlfriend after I had her take it.

Since taking the assessment, I have done a lot of thinking. Numerous inner thoughts and deep conversations later, and I am becoming comfortable with my skin, and I understand who the hell I even am. I will be changing my major and correcting my path in life so that I can live as who I am, and not who I once wanted to be.

The truth is, I am incredibly indecisive, to a detrimental degree. I am also an introvert, and I still have a great deal of self-doubt. Typing this, one of the most prominent thoughts I hear in my internal monologue is that no one will ever care about what I have to say, and I am going to sound like an idiot. Well, maybe, but that won’t stop me anymore. Not after learning who I am.

Hopefully, the same will come of you too. Good luck out there, my friend.