I *like* being unusual

I'm attending an intensive, week-long leadership conference next month, and as part of the training, we'll be studying up on the Meyers-Briggs personality typing system. The folks running the conference have sent out an official Meyers-Briggs test to all attendees, so that we can talk about our own types during the conference.

I'll admit it, I'm a little nervous.

I've never taken the official test before, but I have taken several adapted versions online, and though I've changed a lot over the past 10 years, my type according to these non-official tests has not. I'm INFJ, also known (in the Keirsey system) as a Counselor-Idealist.



INFJ is the rarest of the 16 possible personality types, and that's just the way I like it. On average, 1.5% of the population contains this unusual mix of introversion, intuition, feeling, and judgment. So when you tell me that no, I'm not special, I can say, "Screw you, I so totally am."

My concern here is that the official test will yield a different result. Other than the Introversion/Extraversion category, where I fall solidly into the camp of the former, I tend to hover somewhere around the middle. The results of one online test were thus:

Introverted (I) 60% Extroverted (E) 40%
Intuitive (N) 51.22% Sensing (S) 48.78%
Feeling (F) 58.82% Thinking (T) 41.18%
Judging (J) 53.85% Perceiving (P) 46.15%

Will I still be special if I come out as an ISTP? Probably, but it's just not as cool. I'll let you know how it goes. :) 

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