Personality is a 4-Letter Word

Why Decoding my Myers-Briggs Personality Type Rocked My World

If I told you “I’m an ENFJ,” would you have any idea what that meant? Would those four letters tell you anything valuable about how I process information or make decisions? Or would it just look like a jumble of letters?

A few years ago, I would have fallen into the latter category. However, after taking a test to determine my Myers-Briggs type on 16Personalities.com and researching my own type extensively, I’ve learned that these four little letters can make a huge impact on how you approach your own work, and your understanding of how others approach theirs.

Let’s start with E.

According to 16Personalities.com, the E in my personality type stands for Extravert. This initially came as a shock for me, because I would have considered myself an Introvert (or the other option, I) if you’d asked me up front. I was sure I’d somehow mucked up the test, because as someone who’d frequently been called “socially awkward” and “shy” throughout my childhood, there was just no way I could possibly be anything other than an Introvert. However, this is because I was only focusing on the obvious social connotations of being extraverted vs introverted.