Have you ever heard your friend say he’s an ‘intp personality type’ and scratched your head in confusion? Finding out your personality type can be a major step towards fully understanding yourself and your own motivations. This knowledge is vital to the process of growing up, establishing your own career, and even dressing better.

This article offers a comprehensive framework to figuring your personality type out - one step at a time.

• I or E

Following the format of the Myers’ Briggs personality types, the first component of your personality focuses on introversion or extroversion. These two aspects define your approach to social situations.

An introvert generally prefers avoiding a social space - preferring instead to spend time with their own thoughts - while extroverts find energy and fun in socializing.

If you find socializing a little draining, and far prefer to hang out with yourself, then you are most likely an introvert. But if having fun means a weekend chock-full of catching up with your friends and spending time outdoors, then you are an extrovert.

Introverts derive energy from solitude; hanging out with others exhausts them. Extroverts, on the other hand, derive energy by communicating with others.

• S or N

The battle between sensing and intuition define your worldview. People with sensing-focused traits base their decisions on practical scenarios, with a heavy lean towards realism and data. On the other hand, individuals with intuitive traits base decisions on their instinct.       

Sensing individuals are very practical, realist, and focus on the present or the past. But intuitive individuals are somewhat a forecaster. They visualize the bigger picture and focus on future possibilities and hidden patterns.

• T or F

Thinking vs Feeling underpins your worldview by looking at your decision making process. Put simply, “Do you follow your mind or heart?’. If your personality trait leans more toward logic and proper reasoning, then it’s clear that you use your mind.

Thinkers analyze the facts and proofs behind the curtain of any decision. If you look toward external sources of information before choosing an outcome, then you’re a thinker. Sometimes, thinkers can find themselves in a battle between decisions and others’ emotional needs.

Feelers, on the other hand, prioritize the sense of internal emotion in a time of critical decision making. Instead of any attempt at objective right or wrong, your outcome priorities will rest on the sensitivity and social harmony of those around you. This proclivity toward sensitivity often emanates around you, too, though feelers must be careful in not over-prioritizing others’ emotions over their own wellbeing. Feelers must work on balancing their decisions with the understanding that their charism can greatly influence those around them. This will guide them toward compassion and connection.

• J or P

The final aspect to your own personality type is judging or perceiving. If you follow rules to a T, and are not happy rule-breaking in the slightest, then it’s likely you’re the judging type. You are responsible, fair and maintain a high moral ground.

Perceiving types can view rules as mere suggestions; their own needs, or the demands of others, are far more important to others than some external, far distant rules.