Who Are You? 4 Ways to Know Yourself More Clearly

Because your relationship with yourself is more important than any other.

Personality is complex. To say the least. It is the essence of an individual. It drives us at our very core. Without personality, the human race would be reduced to a formulaic version of ourselves, simply a collection of inputs and outputs, with little to be motivated for beyond what our inputs dictate.

We would be biological machines, a collection of 1s and 0s, firing on all cylinders to accomplish tasks and reproduce. Social structures would deteriorate to a hierarchical food chain, with plenty of ambiguity and plenty of conflicts.

This post-apocalyptic human race devoid of personality sounds like a blast at parties.

Luckily, we don’t exist in that world.

Instead, we live in a vibrant world where personalities thrive as different communities crop up online, focused around hobbies and interests that you would never imagine. Whatever your personality is, with Reddit, Twitter, and now TikTok, you can find others who have similar personalities to you.

“Personality is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique.” — Kendra Cherry

There are differing opinions on how personality develops, whether it is something innate and unique to each of us, or if it is learned over time, or even still if it is some combination.

Regardless of how our personality becomes what it is, it can be extremely valuable for each of us to understand our own.

Know Thyself — Socrates

Understanding our strengths and weaknesses, as well as our desires and fears, is something that enables us each to blossom, grow, and become more well-acquainted with our limitations, abilities, and passions. This is a process that doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes a lot of time, through journaling, meditation, experience, self-reflection, and, my personal favorite, personality tests.

Personality tests are like Buzzfeed, but they matter (sorry Buzzfeed). They can help you to know yourself a little bit more.

The Enneagram

The Enneagram is a test that was introduced to the modern world in 1915 in Moscow, but it has ancient roots at least as far back as Pythagoras.

The test is made up of 9 personality “types,” each defined by their core fear and core desire. Each type is identified by a number, rather than a word.

The numbers do not symbolize a hierarchy, and no one type is superior to another. It simply is a more abstract way to title the types so as not to push a meaningful title on any type.

The Enneagram is unique among personality tests because of its brutally honest nature. Rather than defining individuals by their strengths or weaknesses, the core of each individual is defined by their fears and desires.

This makes some of the test results sound eerily accurate as if the test knows your deepest secrets as well as you do. It also means that results are significant and that the test can sometimes return inaccurate results.

To verify results, it can be relevant to read through the type descriptions to see what type resonates.

How to use it: I have historically been defined as a type 3, but more recently, I have also had traits of a type 8 come across strongly in my test results. This has helped me to put language to some of my emotions and desires, and the Enneagram can sometimes be a helpful tool to understand the motivation behind my feelings and actions.

16 Personalities (Myers-Briggs)

The 16 Personalities test, developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers in the mid-20th century, is an exam that scores individuals on five different traits:

Mind (extraverted or introverted), Energy (intuitive or observant), Nature (thinking or feeling), Tactics (Judging or Prospecting), and Identity (assertive or turbulent). The results are returned as a series of letters reminiscent of a childhood game of mastermind.

My ENFP-A results have shifted over time, based on what season of life I am in at the moment. The 16personalities exam has a grid built that explains the 16 core personalities that each individual and their results can fit in to explain their results.

Once again, based on the length of the test and the similarities between different types, it is possible that the exam itself misrepresents you, and that you identify with a type that is different from your results.

How to use it: Similar to the Enneagram, the 16 Personalities test has helped me to give language to some of the experiences that are woven into my past and the way that it impacts me today. It has helped me to process through the way I show up in hard situations and the way that I respond to crises.

The Gallup StrengthsFinder

The StrengthsFinder is the most positive of the personality tests. It is focused solely on strengths, and the idea driving this is that by focusing on our strengths rather than weaknesses, we can accomplish more and live healthier, happier lives than we can when we focus solely on our weaknesses.

Depending on what you’re willing to pay for this test, you can unlock your top-5 strengths up to all 34 ranked by their significance in your personality, based on the way you answered the questions on the test.

The 34 strengths are split into four quadrants: Executing, Influencing, Relationship-Building, and Strategic Thinking.

The test can say a lot about your work habits, work ethic, and professional development. I have found significant value in this to understand the way that I work together with others.

How to use it: My strengths are very accomplishment-oriented, with Competition, Activator, and Ideation all appearing in my top-5. Understanding my strengths as opposed to someone who has more relational strengths like harmony and positivity has been valuable to understand why some people don’t always make sense to me. It’s helped me to be more empathetic and understand the language and priorities of others.

The Big 5 (OCEAN)

Lastly, the Big 5 Personality Test is based on five specific traits and how their interaction inside you creates your unique personality. This test is scored on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. (The test is sometimes referred to as OCEAN due to the letters forming the neat acronym, OCEAN.)

The results of this test are returned as percentages, and the results are broader than the first two exams. However, there are schools of thought that believe the Big 5 is the best exam, as it is scored on percentages, rather than fitting into a specific type. Your results are simply your results, nothing more.

How to use it: The Big 5 has helped me understand why issues like cleanliness and peace-making matter more to some people than others. Individuals with high conscientiousness care more about organization, structure, and tidiness than those who score lower in conscientiousness. And The Big 5 has helped me understand why that matters.

How To Use Personality Tests To Understand You

Personality tests are a double-edged sword. They can be a valuable tool to provide language for experiences and motivations that otherwise wouldn’t have words and language to put to them.

But they can also be used to limit people.

During my undergraduate college experience, the Enneagram test was used as gospel across student leadership, and it was used at times to put people in boxes, rather than to accentuate strengths.

I was once told that I just couldn’t empathize with someone’s pain because I was a type 3, and type 3s are cold and unfeeling.

Personality tests are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. It’s not about understanding what someone can do, it’s about understanding who someone is.

They are built for personal reflection or as a way to process through experiences and pieces of our personality with trusted friends and therapists.

Personality tests are not as a shortcut to building a personal connection.

I have seen too many relationships try to be hacked into by simply exchanging Enneagram types and Strengthsfinder results.

Each of us is unique.

That’s why each test matters. It’s not about the fact that I am an enneagram type 3 or that Competition is my top strength, or that I am an ENFP-A, or that my OCEAN results are 92–48–85–58–29. It’s about the intersection of them all.

But more than that, they are limited. Even understanding the intersection of each personality test, there are limits to what can be done with a collection of tests.

Two individuals with competition as their top strength will see that strength play out and mean different things, depending on their other strengths and desires.

They are meant to be used as descriptive tools to better understand what has happened. They are not prescriptive means to be able to predict how people will act and respond.

Personality tests cannot show you someone’s heart, and they cannot predict behavior. Instead, they can be used effectively to better understand and empathize with others. They can be used to put language to feelings that there wasn’t language for before.

These are tools that can be extremely valuable if they are not used in isolation.

Use them with meditation, journaling, and conversations with loved ones who know you well.

That is the best way to know yourself.