What exactly is a personality? Our textbook defines personality as, “the relatively stable set of psychological characteristics and behavior patterns that make individuals unique and that account for the consistency of their behavior over time” (Nevid, 2018, chapter 11 – Introduction). What makes you special? God made each of us as amazing individuals, and gave us all our own uniqueness with personality being one of those unique traits.
Before taking the personality test, I would have described myself as, outgoing, fun with a passion for helping others. My personality test came back as, Extraverted (72%) Intuitive (16%) Feeling (41%) and Judging (9%) ENFJ
After reading over the results, I was quite surprised at how accurate the test was. It was very interesting to see my personality explained. Often times I thought about certain things I do and I just thought it was “something I did”. It’s very interesting to consider your personality is actually like a “road map” of who you are and why you do what you do.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (The Bible, Genesis 1:27)
God gave each of us different personalities, I believe, to relate to one another and to worship and honor Him in many different ways. You may like praise and worship, I may like old school hymnals in my worship. These things allow us to be who we are because we are created in His image in our own individual unique ways. And these are things we should celebrate as human beings. How boring would we be if we were all like one another?
As we age, we tend to learn and discover more about ourselves as we change and grow as individuals. Taking a personality test can be a great way to discover your strengths and weaknesses. Have you ever in a situation where you had to work with someone or relate to a person and you just couldn’t figure them out?? I tend to think I am pretty good at reading people and sometimes it’s just hard, confusing and frustrating to not know or understand a person. Because I tend to be an outgoing person, I normally try to find something right away to relate to a person about. This allows for some type of common interest or commanility to establish trust and an interest in one another. How can this be accomplished?? Well, if we could it would actually be nice to just give them the personality test and have them take it before anything else, however, this is just not possible.
The best way to get to know someone is to ask questions. Most times, I genuinely want to know about that new individual I am meeting. For some people, this may be out of your “comfort zone” and feels like “pulling teeth” In my dental profession, many times, I tend to be a counselor, a friend, a parent and a resource of knowledge to that patient sitting in the chair. If I can make a person feel comfortable in a very uncomfortable atmosphere, then this gives me great pleasure. My goal and reward is to try to help someone out who may be feeling very fearful of being at the dentist. After reading the information on the ENFJ personality and the specifics that went with it, I feel that it really does describe myself.
So the question may be, does the personality test actually work? Is this a true test of who you are as an individual? As our textbook states, “Reliance on self-report data in personality tests such as the MMPI can introduce potential biases, however. Some responses may be outright lies. Others may be prone to more subtle distortions, such as tendencies to respond in a socially desirable direction— in other words, to put one’s best foot forward.” (Nevid, 2018 11.5-1b)
Personality tests can be just like any other test. If the information put out there is not correct the outcome will be false. In other words, if we are not truly honest with ourselves and others, can we truly be the person we are trying to portray?? Many times we are not honest with ourselves and would like to project someone we are not. Have you ever been in a situation that you felt uncomfortable in? Maybe you wanted others to view you as someone you may not necessarily be. I think we have all done that once or twice in our lives. Why do we feel the need to do this?? I believe we want to look good in the eyes of others. Pleasing others is never easy and some of us, depending on your personality, tend to do it more than others. However, we ultimately know that we can never please everyone and to be truly happy we need to be the best true version of ourselves, just as God created us in His image.
We should all try to do our best at embracing who we are as unique, amazing individuals just as God has created us. Of course we evolve, change grow and mature at each stage in life, but ultimately we are made in His image and God loves us no matter what.
