I am so excited to being our spring women’s series for 2016 The Key to Me!

We will be spending these 5 weeks studying out our Myers Briggs Personality types and learning to grow in different areas of our lives based on these types! We each have so much to learn about ourselves and about our personality type and we can use the things we learn to learn more about God and more about how to become like Christ!

Gen 1:27 says: God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

How awesome is it to know that we are each created in God’s image! As we learn more about ourselves and who God created us to be, we learn more about God and who He really is! Myers Briggs has 16 different personality types and it’s so cool to think that as we learn about each type and the similarities and differences between them, we learn more about 16 different sides of God’s character and the image that we are created in!

This past week we discussed personality types and personal growth. We walked through an introduction of what Myers Briggs Type Indicator is and we talked about how to use what we learn about our type to grow personally.

We discussed 3 keys to Personality type and Personal Growth:

1. Embrace Your Type

We broke down what Myers Briggs is based on and learned how to embrace our 4-letter type.

We learned that in order to embrace our type we have to determine what our type is. If you haven’t taken a free personality test you can take one here.

Many people who take the personality test feel like they may be in between a couple different types or that they aren’t really sure if the results are accurate.

Reading through descriptions of each option can help you to determine what your type really is.

The 4 letter types are categorized into temperaments, and the temperament can be further broken down into roles and individual types. Much of our study on personality type will be based less on each specific type and more on research about each temperament that many can relate to at one time.

Our second key…

2. Enhance Your Knowledge.

After you have determined what your type is and embraced your type, the next step is to enhance your knowledge about your type.

This can come from checking out websites and descriptions of your type

http://www.humanmetrics.com and http://www.truity.com are just two of the great websites on personality.

You can also venture into reading books on personality type, googling information and descriptions of your type and my personal favorite, creating a pinterest board dedicated to pins about your personality type!

Enhancing your knowledge about your type will greatly add to your ability to use that knowledge for personal growth.

One thing to dig into and learn about is the function stack for your type. Each personality type has four functions, the dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior function. We each use Sensing, iNtuition, Thinking, and Feeling somewhere in our function stack.

Here is a simple description of each function’s role in the function stack.

There is a lot to understand about how to determine which function fits where in our own function stack but the simplest way is to use a chart like this to figure out what your functions are.

The e or i indicates whether your that function is extroverted or introverted.

For example, my personality type is INFJ.

My functions are:

Dominant: Introverted iNtuition, Auxiliary: Extroverted Feeling, Tertiary: Introverted Thinking, Inferior: Extroverted Sensing.

Learning what your function stack is and enhancing your knowledge about your type then leads you to our third key:

3. Empower Your Life.

The things we learn about our types, including our strengths and weaknesses should be used to empower our lives. We should not use these things as excuses or things to enable us to just live the way we want to.

The best part of being created in God’s image is that we can empower our lives by what we learn in order to grow toward being more like Christ.

Learning that your introverted doesn’t mean that you can then choose not to initiate with people. Jesus was an incredible initiator. So in order to become more like Christ and empower your life as an introvert, you choose to get filled up in your alone time so you can pour yourself out for others like Jesus did.

There are many other examples I could give, but that’s where you get to focus on learning and growing in your personal life.

Enhancing your knowledge about your type gives you the ability to become more self-aware and to put words to the things you think and feel.

Empowering your life equips you to take what you’ve learned and allow yourself to grow closer to God and to become more like Christ.

These are descriptions of each of the introverted/extroverted functions that could be in your stack.

Your dominant and auxiliary functions are your strengths and the most developed of your functions. Learning more about these allows you to empower your life to use the strengths and gifts that God has given you.

Your tertiary and inferior functions are less developed and less mature in your function stack. In fact, your inferior function is the one that comes out when you are stressed or overwhelmed. It makes sense then that we often feel unlike our true selves when we are stressed out or overwhelmed.

These descriptions are what each function looks like when it is developed and you are using it correctly. We often don’t use our inferior functions correctly so these descriptions can be used to describe what your inferior function could look like if you choose to develop it more.

In times of stress, we have the choice to either develop our inferior function more or turn instead to our dominant function which is more mature and developed already and use that to get us out of our rut. Both are great options for personal growth!

 

These things should be used as an introduction to personality type and to start us on the path of personal growth through Embracing your Type, Enhancing your Knowledge and Empowering your Life.

 

Stay tuned for this week’s lesson on Personality Type and Spiritual Growth!