I have been a Myers Briggs practitioner for three years now, and the more I work with this instrument, the more I see just how powerful it is – now only to help us understand ourselves better, but also to appreciate the other people in our lives. A very critical component of this is the realization that there is no one RIGHT type. They are all good! How powerful is that! We get to know and really appreciate ourselves, and to do the same for the other people who make up our world.

There are four different dichotomies explored within the Myers Briggs Psychological Type (MBTI) Assessment. The questions asked eventually lead to four letters which indicate the assessment taker’s preferences. Notice that I said preferences. We all have some of these characteristics some of the time – there are no absolutes. But like our preference of writing with our left or right hand, there are preferences that just seem “easier”, more natural to us.

All people have preferences – they are our natural gifts. They are innate – we are born with them and if we were allowed to be whom we really are when we grew up, they can be fairly recognizable. It is not the same as our skills, and does not necessarily determine our behavior. They do however influence the way we behave, communicate and interact in our lives both at home and in the workplace. They develop over a lifetime and, as we age, we find ourselves naturally working on the non-dominant functions in an innate attempt to balance ourselves out.

Once we become comfortable with our type preferences, there is a whole world to explore. We can learn how our particular preferences tend to be in relationships, within organizations, how our type communicates, how we learn, our trigger points, and what we can do to alleviate stress when we are “in the grip”. It is fascinating and I recommend it to anyone really wanting to know themselves better.

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed by Isabel Meyers and Katharine Briggs, based on the work of Carl Jung. Jung believed that much human behavior that appears random actually follows clear and predictable patterns related to a few basic personality differences. In his book Psychological Types, Jung described some of the personality differences in normal healthy people.

Jung broke down his theory into four functions and four attitudes. The functions refer to two processes, relating to how we gather information and how we process the information to make decisions. Jung actually described two attitudes, describing the way people focus their energy. Myers and Briggs went a step further and created another dimension dealing with whether a person’s focus in the outer world is on making a decision or gathering information.

Self-knowledge is critical to self-acceptance – if we really understand ourselves – get to know what is an inherent part of who we are – we not only appreciate our gifts, but the gifts of those around us. If we really KNOW that there is no right or wrong type, we are able to work with what we have without going thought the painstaking process of trying to remake ourselves to fit a certain mold.

One of the reasons I started working with this instrument was because of all the people I saw who were trying to fit themselves into a job for which they were not really suited. My own personal experience was that I majored in a subject in college, did well in the subject, but was very unhappy with the field after I started working in it. And this happened even though I went to college as an older student and had some real world experience under my belt.

Of course, there are a lot of other reasons other than finding the right job to take the MBTI. There is something very satisfying about having our ideas about whom we are confirmed, or made even clearer. It is well worth the time and effort.

Have you ever wondered why you can relate to some people, while other people simply drive you crazy? Why some people just seem to speak your language, even after knowing them for only a short period of time? Why some things are stressful to you while those very same things are no big deal to others?

These were the types of questions that motivated Carl Jung to explore in depth the differences in people’s personalities (1921-1971). Although Carl Jung initially differentiated only the extrovert/introvert differences, he eventually expanded his research to further break down these differences as he saw that the use of only the first two differences did not lead to the understanding he was seeking.

In the 1940s, Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs continued what Carl Jung had started and, after studying an initial group of people for over 20 years, eventually developed what is now called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). There is a lot of information available as to the specifics of how these assessments was developed, but suffice it to say here that the MBTI is now a internationally recognized way of providing an understanding of personal preferences.

There are so many benefits that this instrument has to offer, the first one of which is to help us understand and value ourselves – definitely not from the perspective of a “right” way or a “wrong” way, but from the perspective that it is all good. What a gift! From my own experience as a person who initially just took the assessment and is now a practitioner who administers it, there is something so gratifying about the clarify that comes from seeing what we perhaps thought of as a negative trait or way or being, as simply the way we are – with no judgments attached.

Once we learn to appreciate and understand ourselves, we are then able to begin the process of understanding those around us – with the same knowing that there are no right or wrong types. Just this perspective alone can make the world a much nicer place in which to exist with our fellowman.