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Know Who You Are: How To Gain Self-Knowledge

Have you ever been asked how do you see yourself? This type of question is probably kind of familiar in job interview and I believe there are lot of people who find it difficult to explain themselves.

Even in the daily life, people still don't pay attention much about self-knowledge and how it has big impact in finding self-identity and developing characteristic.

The global understanding a person has of themselves must involve both positive and negative personality traits. Ironically, there are usually three types of people in society: the ones who only know their good side which can lead to arrogance and ignorance to their surroundings, the ones who only focus on their bad side which can cause them unable to see their good potential due to lack of confidence, and the ones who don't know both their good and bad side which sooner or later can bring them into emptiness due to unknown self-identity.

MAKE A LIST OF YOUR TRAITS

The first step to start gaining self-knowledge is making a list of your strengths and weaknesses based on your own perspective. All you have to do is just simply try to describe yourself and write the characteristic down on the paper. But if it is too hard for you to think about the exact words to describe, you can just write the paragraph of how do you feel about yourself, for example “Sometimes I am like I can feel happy in one minute but in the next minute I feel sad,” or “It’s weird that when someone tells me a sad story, tears falling down my face like I can feel all his pains,” etc. It aims to measure how far do you know yourself before you take the next step.

PERSONALITY TESTS

These days there are lot of free personality tests that you can take to figure yourself out, including positive and negative traits; skill and potential you have within yourself. And this can be useful to understand where your ambitious will take you and to decide your career path. I believe there are still so much things you don’t know about yourself. So I guess it won’t hurt to spend your free time to check these personality tests out!

1. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

    The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. MBTI is based on the conceptual theory proposed by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist who had speculated that people experience the world using four principal psychological functions – sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking.

    The four categories are Introversion/Extraversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perception. Each person is said to have one preferred quality from each category, producing 16 unique types. If you’re eager to know your MBTI personality type, click here: https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test


    2. Enneagram Test

      The Enneagram is a personality typing system that consist of nine different types. Everyone is considered to be one single type although one can have traits belonging to other ones. The nine types are universally identified by the numbers 1 to 9 which are placed around the Enneagram symbol with its own individual names (on this article I use the names created by Riso and Hudson).

      You can take quick Enneagram test by clicking on this link https://enneagramtest.net/.

      3. OSPP Four Temperaments Test (O4TS)

        This is kind of short test designed to help people to figure their classical personality type, classified into four temperaments. The idea of the four temperaments traces back to an Ancient Greek medical theory that there were four fundamental bodily humors which could cause illness if they were out of balance. The terms of four temperaments were coined by the Greek physician Aelius Galenus to describe the effect of these humors on human behavior. The four temperaments and their predominant humors are as follows:

        • Sanguine : Blood
        • Choleric : Yellow bile
        • Phlegmatic : Phlegm
        • Melancholic : Black bile

        Find out your type by clicking on this link: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/O4TS/


        ZODIAC SIGN
        Perhaps, this one becomes a little bit controversial because I know not everyone believes in astrology. But, I will still engage this in the article because without you realize or not zodiac sign actually has its capacity to help you discover your personality.

        The 12 astrological signs in order are: Aries (The Ram), Taurus (The Bull), Gemini (The Twins), Cancer (The Crab), Leo (The Lion), Virgo (The Virgin), Libra (The Scales), Scorpio (The Scorpion), Sagittarius (The Archer), Capricorn (The Goat), Aquarius (The Water Bearer), and Pisces (The Fish).

        To know what is your zodiac sign you need to adjust your birth date with the picture above and that’s gonna be your sun sign. Find the complete explanation of your zodiac sign here: https://cafeastrology.com/articles/signsofthezodiac.htmlIf you want more accurate result you can try Natal  Astrology, also known as genethliacal astrology, is the system of astrology based on the concept that each individual's personality in life can be determined by constructing a natal chart for the exact date, time, and location of that individual's birth. You can get your natal birth chart report by clicking this link: https://astro.cafeastrology.com/natal.php 

        “The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge” ― Plato


        Read next article: 
        https://jessahirano.journoportfolio.com/articles/know-who-you-are-the-importance-of-self-knowledge/

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