Myers-Briggs

Okay, I honestly don't remember what triggered this recent obsession with the Myers-Briggs personality types (possibly the MyType application on Facebook), but lately my friends and I have been analyzing our personalities up the wazoo. In fact, this is what entertained us for nearly an entire car ride home from St. Pete Beach to Orlando.

If you're not familiar with Myers-Briggs, the personality types are broken down into four categories:

• Extraverted/Introverted (where you draw your energy from, either people/activities/things or internal reflection)
• Sensing /iNtuitive(how you process information, whether through concrete fact or abstract patterns)
• Thinking/Feeling (how you make decisions, whether on logic or value-based systems)
• Judging/Perceiving (your lifestyle, either structured or open-ended)

Not that any person is confined to any one description, but in Myers-Briggs, a four letter combination of these different functions result in your "personality type." I have this book that they gave me at work that breaks down the 16 personality types, giving descriptions of each type.

To see oneself utterly eviscerated for all the world to see in neat, tidy bulletpoints is both liberating and disconcerting. Brings equal amounts of incredible normalization and humiliation.

And it kind of makes me want to crawl into a hole with my inadequacies.

But what the heck, it's time for a blog about it. Might as well.

My personality type is INFP, a.k.a. "the Idealist." Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving. The description is fairly spot on, although I think I've become more of an extravert in recent years. And I've become more of a logical (more Thinking, less Feeling) person. The cold, cruel world is squelching all the emotion out of me...;)

A short description of an INFP:

Quiet, reflective, and idealistic. Interested in serving humanity. Well-developed value system, which they strive to live in accordance with. Extremely loyal. Adaptable and laid-back unless a strongly-held value is threatened. Usually talented writers. Mentally quick, and able to see possibilities. Interested in understanding and helping people.

And this part was scarily accurate, if you have any interest and time to read... it's kinda long. But I was actually disappointed that I was so predictable in my INFP-ness.

Anyway, do you all know your personality type?

Someone posted on facebook the more "negative" description of the personality types, which I found pretty entertaining. According to this website, I am a "Fanatic." Mwuahaha...