Myers-Briggs Basics for Coaches and Creators

I began using Myers-Briggs for Personal Growth at the end of 2017 when I went through a divorce which was the tail end of cascading failures in my life. I lost a few dream jobs, and interpersonal challenges along with mood disorder challenges with cyclothymia. I've also come to find out I've got inattentive ADHD and am a Highly Sensitive Person. I was feeling pretty hopeless even though a potential new and promising life was facing me.

I began learning about Myers-Briggs because I wanted to separate my failure and mental challenges from who I am. Up until that point I had identified that my mental illness was me, not just some illness but somehow my personality was also to blame for all of my failures. Essentially, I needed to separate who I am from what my illnesses and challenges are. It was simply an identity crisis.

I turned to online help, searching for resources that sounded legit and came across Personality Hacker's YouTube videos. They helped me understand, on a basic level, who I was and that being who I am is not this uncommon horror of society. I did fit in somewhere and there was a reason for many of my ways of thinking.

It started with focusing on myself, diving deeper into books and studies around INTPs (my type) and then expanding to wondering about my partner (ENFP), her former husband, my former partner, my mom, my dad, and other people in my life. It became this fascination with getting to know how people ticked because up until that point I simply had no idea and my assumptions were terrible.

So, I spent a lot of time talking to people, looking for patterns in the real world as to how these traits showed up in people, ways to confirm their type and doing a lot more listening than I ever had before.

In April 2018, I connected with Personality Hacker professionally and we began to work together on producing their live events, which consist of training people how to conversationally profile people whether that's friends, family or for professional purposes. Through these events I got to personally engage with people who knew their types, went through similar difficult transitions and many whom were using this skill in their coaching practices.

And that's one of the most important and interesting applications for this tool-set, coaching. Regardless of the kind of coach you are, knowing someone's personality type and all that entails gives you a boost on how to interact with your clients and what direction you may need to calibrate them in. Since not everyone is going to show up as their obvious best selves, having this tool at your disposal gives you numerous angles at which to help someone.

That's the reason I do this, is to educate coaches to help others to become their best selves. I also know how much this information and advice has been helpful for me to not only stay alive but to get myself on a path to feeling like myself again (and in a lot of ways for the first time) as I fully embrace who I am and have the language to show others how they can do the same.