Monthly Archives: February 2011

My Personality

Recently at work we have been trying to improve communications skills and tactics.  As part of that, we’ve had to learn and determine our Myers Briggs personality type.  These personality types are widely researched, studied, and considered a very accurate representation of a person’s traits.

The general idea is that you have to determine your personality traits you have.  For example:  Are you introverted or extroverted?  Do you rely on senses or intuition?  Are you a thinker or a feeler?  etc.

There are various means of self-rating and determining; as well as plenty of online test/questionnaires that make an attempt to determine your personality type for you.  When I self-rated, I came out as an “ISFJ” – which I must say is a pretty accurate description of my personality.  See below:

The ISFJ feels a strong sense of responsibility and duty. They take their responsibilities very seriously, and can be counted on to follow through. For this reason, people naturally tend to rely on them. The ISFJ has a difficult time saying “no” when asked to do something, and may become over-burdened. In such cases, the ISFJ does not usually express their difficulties to others, because they intensely dislike conflict, and because they tend to place other people’s needs over their own. The ISFJ needs to learn to identify, value, and express their own needs, if they wish to avoid becoming over-worked and taken for granted.

However, I was interested to see that I sometimes am rated as an INFJ when I take online tests/questionnaires that determine my personality type for me.  And this personality type does also seem to run quite parallel to mine.  Specifically, one section quite strongly caught my eye:

INFJs may fantasize about getting revenge on those who victimize the defenseless. The concept of ‘poetic justice’ is appealing to the INFJ.

That concept does really ring pretty heavy with me – as most of my favorite movies and TV shows always seem to have some degree of a revenge/justice theme.  I’ve even blogged about it before.

Whether I’m an INFJ or an ISFJ I guess doesn’t really matter that much – but overall it’s been an interesting experience of self-reflection to try and determine and label my various personality traits.  It’s also fun for me to try to guess my friends/family members. So if anyone reading this knows theirs, feel free to comment.