If you know me personally, you know my love for astrology, love languages and Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are real. I love learning about how we classify ourselves and how we perceive ourselves.
I’m going to talk about astrology, Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, and overall personality-based quizzes and why you shouldn’t judge others for enjoying these ‘pseudoscience’ psychology classifications.
Astrology
I’m no expert on this topic, as for any topic that I will be discussing but I will say I listen to enough podcasts and YouTube videos to know that astrology isn’t the same as horoscopes. I understand horoscopes sound like a lot of dog poop but that’s because horoscopes try to predict your future and try to tell you how your day is going to go. Astrology is all personality based.
What I love about astrology is planet alignment and how every planet represents different aspects of your personality. An ascendant (aka rising sign) is how you like to be perceived or in short, your social personality. Your sun sign, the most common one that most people know, is your ego. The moon sign represents your emotions and inner mood. You can go through all the planets and dive in so much deeper but these three are the main ones that I love to look at.
For me, astrology is a way for me to connect to others. I’ve gotten along and met so many people through my love of astrology. It’s honestly a party trick at this point and I’ve bonded with so many people through astrology. Whether the planet alignment means anything or not, it gives me an excuse to connect to others.
Pre-Covid, I had to celebrate someone’s birthday with a bunch of new people I’ve never met. I brought up the astrology topic and we ended up having so many people call their moms to ask what time they’re born. It became this entire wholesome event of self discovery and I was able to have in-depth conversations about their personalities. I got to discover whether they agree with their alignments, why or why not and I ended up leaving the event fulfilled as an extrovert and making new connections and friends.
In case you’re wondering, I’m a Libra sun, Taurus rising and Sagittarius moon.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
I’m not sure if anyone outside of Canada had this experience, but we were forced to do it in our grade 10 careers class. This is a self-report questionnaire that you can take here, and it claims that there are 16 personalities.
There are four assigned categories: introversion/extraversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling and judging/perceiving. If you’re curious, I am Extroverted, Intuition, Feeling and Perceiving – aka ENFP.
Since there are 16 personalities to go through, everyone has an assigned name, example, ENFP is a Campaigner. The description that goes with it: enthusiastic, creative, social free spirits who can always find a reason to smile. If you go on the website, you can find out how your personality types works in relationships and parent hood as well as workplace habits, career paths and strengths and weaknesses.
I absolutely love MBTI. I love finding out what my friends are and trying to have a better understanding of how they handle problems and how they interact with others. More importantly, I love this more for a self reflection perspective. I understand that this quiz seems mundane and very self-explanatory, but I think when you see the big picture and you see everything laid out in front of you like this, you can understand how you work, how you perceive yourself and how you’re perceived to others.
The MBTI helps me work on myself, understand my good and bad habits and how I problem solve.
Other personality-based quizzes
You guys have probably heard of love languages, maybe even chakras and even some A/B/C/D type personality quizzes.
I think if we’re really to connect all the categories together, they all have one thing in common: discovery. I’ve been judged and scrutinized for enjoying astrology and MBTI especially because it’s not ‘real’ or it’s ‘made up science’. What would I like to say to that is: who cares? I think this non-scientific based analysis is such a great way to give clarity to yourself. I like to feel like I belong to something bigger. It’s cool to meet like minded people. It’s also a great way to see like oh yes, I enjoy being around social gatherings and I work well with noise. It’s little things that make you feel included in this world.
Astrology is controversial because it’s this claim that planet alignment means something on your personality, and I get it sounds crazy but if it were real… how cool would that be? Who cares if none of this stuff isn’t based in some formula and can’t be truly measured?
Earth is filled with negativity and divide, I love to think these little things can bring us together, even for one second. We’re constantly trying to figure ‘our purpose’ or even who we are and if these things help provide you with some clarity? Run with it. I’m sick of hearing people bringing others down because we’re to ‘egotistical’ to listen to real science. Real science doesn’t tell me whether or not I’m indecisive, astrology does. Point is, your journey to self-discovery is your own and if crystals, tarot cards, personality quizzes help with that journey, no one else should have a say.
It's Phancy 