When You Want to Know Yourself More Deeply Than a Personality Test
If your type-test result feels like it's missing a couple of percent, here's how to see yourself in three dimensions, across several axes, beyond a single letter.
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When you first saw your personality test result, you probably nodded along: “Yes, that's totally me!” But as time passed, something started to feel a little off (that missing 2%) or you'd think, “but there are plenty of times I'm the exact opposite of this.”
That's not because the test is wrong. It's because people are too three-dimensional to be fully captured by a single type.
What a type test gives you
A test that sorts people into a few types, like MBTI, is a good starting point. It hands your complicated self a single word, so for the first time you put yourself into language: “ah, so I'm this kind of person.” That first “aha” moment is truly precious.
It's just that a starting point is only a starting point. Everyone has a grain that can't be fully explained by one letter or one type.
People are more dimensional than 16 boxes
You become a slightly different person depending on the situation, depending on the relationship. The you at work differs from the you in front of a close friend, and you can be calm most of the time yet turn endlessly fiery in front of a certain topic.
This isn't a lack of consistency; it means several grains (your social self and private self) live within you together. So when you view yourself not as one fixed type but as a three-dimensional map made by several axes, it comes into far clearer focus.
How to see yourself more deeply
Deeper self-understanding doesn't stop at “I'm such-and-such type.” It goes down to “on which axes am I strong, and in which moments does which me wake up?”
- When dealing with people, where do I stand?
- When handling emotions, what is my grain like?
- Which relationships wake my other sides?
When these axes come together, a far richer map of “me” is drawn than any single word.
Drawing your three-dimensional map
If you want to see yourself clearly across several axes instead of locking yourself into one letter, take the free personality test and lay out your social self, private self, and five axes on a single page. You might just hit a moment of “ah, so that's why I was like that back then.”
Find your three-dimensional personality for free →
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