“We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see.

We are freed by conscious perception.”

– Vernon Howard

How well do you know yourself? How well do you think you know others?

One question you might also try to answer: How we can I see beyond appearances and my own projections?

Although we are confident we see the world as it is, the world and other people are so multi-faceted and complex that it is questionable if any of us ever glimpses true reality. Yet, it seems life tasks us with the need to refine and bring into focus a better understanding of what is real.

Finding such a perspective can be a lifetime pursuit, but there are tools that can teach us a way shift our perspective while providing a better understanding of who we are. The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) is such a tool; a personality typology based on C.G. Jung’s work. It serves as a useful typology to facilitate awareness of how we judge and function in the world based on our individual perceptions.

Each of us has a unique and subjective perspective. Within these volitional perceptions however, lie underlying patterns that are consistent and observable. And although the realm of individual perception belies reality, it is at least a small way into entering the inner world of psyche and discovering what those patterns are. As Jung said: “It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” Creating meaning through our perceptions of who we are and what life means, how we fit into the universe, is imperative to the psychic structures we continue to build throughout our lives.

Psychologist Edward de Bono says that “studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.”

New ideas about ourselves and others? What value would you place on having a working tool to accommodate a creative process of seeing ourselves and others in a new light, rather than the old persistent ways we may sometimes project onto others? Perhaps it would be worth it to peek in to the world of the MBTI.

There are 16 personality types made up of 8 dichotomies of preference in the MBTI:

The main components that make up these type combinations are dichotomies we will explore in more details in future post installments:

*Where you prefer to get your energy (Extroversion or Introversion),

*How you prefer to take in information (Sensing or Intuition),

*How you prefer to make decisions (Thinking or Feeling), and

*How you prefer to deal with the outer world (Judging or Perceiving).

 

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~Pamela Thompson
Team Host Lead
Jung Society of Utah