Many years ago when I was in the corporate world, every team bonding activity involved some kind of personality test.

These tests evaluated our preferences against others in our teams and shed light on how we prefer to lead and work with others but also come to understand our own strengths and weaknesses. (I’ll say weaknesses because in the 90s, the use of that word wasn’t politically incorrect. Let’s just say they were “development opportunities” as our managers and team leads would constantly bang on about).

These tests like Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and others were constant and admittedly I found them fun to do but I didn’t pay any attention to them. If anything, my type was always the one that stood out from the rest as there was never anyone else like me.

I remember distinctly one of the facilitators drawing a matrix on the whiteboard and placed people in their respective box. I was the only one – alone – sitting in her box on the board. I’ll never forget that because it seemed to confirm what I had been feeling in my work life about how different my thinking of and about work was, compared to other people.

However, as these personality tests have absolutely no evidence or science behind them, I couldn’t be seen as using or spruiking them. It would have been “career suicide” for me being in the learning and development field. And yet, MBTI was going on strong. People were more likely to believe it than someone who encouraged them to ignore their lack of evidence.

So during my professional life, I kept my mouth shut because I learned that people judge you. They shoot down your arguments. They ridicule. The worst offenders are the people in your profession. With social media like Twitter (as it was known back then), any contrary views, you were likely to be publicly ridiculed which hurt your network and possibly, your career.

Even mentioning MBTI as fun was taboo. But let’s not mention that many people online dabbled in it (as they did by reading their star signs or tarot cards or whatever).

The trick, I learned, was to not make this public. To stay on the higher ground and pretend that your career is going well and that you were successful.

I think that’s what gave me the shits in all honesty. Inauthenticity.

What was wrong with saying, “sure, I’ve done my MBTI test and it was a bit of fun. Don’t believe it but hey, it made me think about some things.”

I don’t know how I stumbled upon this gripe now two years after leaving work. It may have been one of Frank James videos that cracked me up and amused me. Here’s an example:

It reminded me of those corporate MBTI tests so I went back through them and saw that my type was INFJ. (I had since done the test and it’s still the same).

So I put aside my critical thinking of this test and just went along with it. Let’s see what INFJ is (as it wasn’t ever explained to me properly except that “it’s a rare type”) and I did a bit of research.

I have to add though that my research also involved reading a lot of classics and modern literature and questioning why I resonated with some authors and characters in their books and not with others. I reasoned that maybe, I felt that I could understand them because I thought exactly the same. Virginia Woolf, Esther in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Jane Eyre, Holden Caulfield, the character in Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground….yeah, they may all well have been me there in black and white.

I started reading about INFJs and in all honesty, I felt wrong. As if I was stooping now to something that was not factual. Not true and correct. I felt guilty. How much of this guilt was coming from me thinking about what OTHERS would think of me?

I contemplated not writing this post in case someone from my old working life would read this and make some negative comment.

Then I thought, “why not? Who cares! I can read whatever I like!”

So here we are.

It’s been interesting exploring this type in order to understand and accept my preferences. (I’ve just been looking into INFJs and no others). Over the years, maturity has allowed me to accept who I am, how I operate, and relate to others. I know now why I think differently to others, (i think like a web not like cause-and-effect), I see trends and patterns, I delve down rabbit warrens and people think of me as quirky. And creative.

(I don’t think I am – I pine that I wish I was more creative but nevertheless).

I stumbled upon the videos by Lauren Upsala which intrigued me. Every video she shared, was exactly the approach I take in my work and relating with people so they came some way in helping me understand that I’m not weird. I’m wired to simply look at deeper meaning, connections, relationships and networks of the world around me. It also explains why I would have continued to be frustrated in a corporate business world.

I’m glad I left the working world when I did. It took me until my 50s to realise that the working world works on pretence. Of being seen to make change for good but it’s not. We are all playing games. When I was younger, I had idealistic views that weren’t practical to others and now which I understand. However I was always also told, “keep being your creative, individual you”.

Only after a while, the working world beats it out of you.

Now, two years after leaving work, I’m only now just feeling that I’m coming into my own and letting my own personality through not having to face up to the world with a mask on or pretending anymore.

I’m enjoying each day exploring, learning, reading, writing and finally feel that my own thinking is exactly that. I’m also enjoying the creative process of building my YouTube channel as well as running my own book club and I’m not making excuses for what I’m doing.

I don’t need to explain these to anyone or even feel guilty about it.