How to Know Yourself Better (Beyond Tests)
I've taken the MBTI test three times now. The first two said INFJ. The third one flipped to INFP, which bothered me more than it should have — I remember staring at the result thinking, which one is actually me? Then I opened the Big Five I'd taken in January. Scored high on Openness, high on Agreeableness. Nodded. Closed the tab. And realized, with an odd small sting, that I'd just spent forty minutes learning nothing I didn't already know.
That's the thing about personality tests after a while. They start reading like horoscopes for people who majored in something. You recognize the shape of yourself in them, but the shape doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't tell you why you canceled plans on Tuesday. It doesn't explain why certain conversations leave you wrung out and others leave you wired. It just hands you four letters — or sometimes a different four letters — and a vague sense of permission to be whoever you already were.
So I stopped treating the tests as answers and started treating them as starting points. Hi, I’m Maren! What I've been running instead — for about six months now — is a looser, messier set of practices that have actually told me things I didn't know. That's what this piece is about.
Why Personality Tests Aren't Enough
The main problem isn't that tests like MBTI are wrong. It's that they're stable in a way real people aren't — except when they're not, which is its own problem. I'm an INFJ in the morning and something closer to a tired extrovert by 4pm. And apparently, on one particular Sunday, I was an INFP. The test doesn't capture any of that.
There's actual research on this. Studies have found that MBTI test-retest reliability is poor — roughly half of people get a different result within five weeks of retaking. Which, yes, explained my INFJ-to-INFP flip, but also made me wonder what I was really measuring. A four-letter code isn't built to track the part of you that changes based on sleep, context, who you're with, and what week of the year it is.
The deeper limitation is about what tests can see. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich's research — the one a lot of leadership books quote — found that most people think they're self-aware but only about 10-15% actually are. Her team identified two kinds: internal self-awareness (how clearly you see your own values and reactions) and external self-awareness (how accurately you understand how others perceive you). Tests only scratch at the first one, and not very well. They can't touch the second at all.
That's the gap I've been trying to close.
5 Ways to Build Real Self-Awareness
Journaling With Intention
I used to think journaling meant writing about my day. It doesn't, or at least not the useful kind. The useful kind asks specific questions and waits for uncomfortable answers.
What worked for me was switching from "how was today" to "what surprised me today." The first question produces a summary. The second one produces data. Research consistently shows expressive writing reduces anxiety and improves emotional regulation, but only when you actually write about what matters — not a chronology of meetings.
One shift Eurich's research suggests: ask "what" instead of "why." When something bothers me, "why am I upset" spirals. "What am I feeling, and what triggered it" lands somewhere I can use.
Tracking Patterns in Your Behavior
The second thing I started doing is less poetic. I just note things. Not in a beautiful bullet journal — in a text file on my phone, two or three lines a day. When I had energy. When I didn't. What I avoided. What I reached for when tired.
After about a month you see things you can't unsee. I noticed I say yes to calls on Monday I'll resent by Thursday. I noticed I scroll my phone the exact moment a task gets hard, not when I'm bored. Self-monitoring as a psychological practice has decades of clinical research behind it — the act of observing your own behavior changes it, because you can't keep claiming you don't know what you're doing once it's written down three Mondays in a row.
This is where my INFJ framing broke. Or my INFP one, depending on which test day you're asking about. The log said I'm also a person who quietly avoids hard emails on Fridays. That was true regardless of which letters I got that month. Only the log was actionable.
Asking Trusted People for Honest Feedback
This is the one I put off longest. It's also the one that moved the needle most.
There's a framework from 1955 called the Johari Window, and the part that matters is simple: there's a version of you that's visible to others but invisible to you. Your blind spot. You can't reason your way into it. You have to ask.
I asked three people last autumn: one friend, one former colleague, one family member. Same question to each: "What's something about me you think I don't see clearly?" Two of the three answers I expected. The third one, from the former colleague, hit a place I didn't know was there — she said I get quiet in a particular way when I disagree, and people read it as agreement. I'd been doing that my entire career without knowing.
That's external self-awareness. You can't get it from a quiz.
Trying New Experiences Deliberately
This one sounds like a travel magazine cliché, but there's actual psychology behind it. Openness to experience is one of the Big Five traits most linked to personal growth and well-being — and unlike MBTI types, it's measurably changeable through deliberate practice.
What matters, I've found, isn't the size of the experience. It's the deliberateness. I took a solo pottery class in November specifically because I knew I'd be bad at it and couldn't optimize my way through. What I learned wasn't about clay. It was that I'm much less comfortable being visibly incompetent than I'd claimed to be. That's a thing about myself. I wouldn't have found it on a test — any of the three times.
Using AI Tools That Learn About You
Here's where my feelings get complicated. Most AI tools I've tried for self-reflection are exactly the same problem as personality tests — they give you a result based on what you said once, then act like that's who you are.
What shifted something was trying one that actually remembered. I've been using Macaron for a few months now, and the part that's changed how I think about self-knowledge isn't the answers it gives. It's that it notices patterns across conversations I'd forgotten I had. Two weeks ago, it referenced something I'd mentioned offhandedly in October — a thing about how I schedule work when I'm anxious — and reflected it back in a way that made me realize I'd been doing it for years.
That's not a test result. That's closer to what a good therapist does when they say "you mentioned this in March." The memory is the tool. Without it, you're just explaining yourself to a stranger every session, which is what most tools do and why most self-reflection apps quietly get deleted by week three.
Self-Discovery Is a Process, Not a Result
The mistake I kept making was treating self-knowledge like a destination — like if I just read enough books or took enough assessments, I'd arrive at Maren, complete and understood. That's not how it works. You're running experiments on a moving target. The self you're trying to know is being actively rewritten by the fact that you're paying attention to it.
Which, honestly, is the part I find comforting. I'm not supposed to have this figured out. I'm supposed to be noticing more than I did last year. That's the actual measure.
FAQ
How do I start understanding myself better?
Pick one of the five methods above and run it for two weeks, not two days. Journaling with specific prompts is the lowest-friction entry point. The goal isn't a breakthrough — it's building a small habit of noticing. If after two weeks nothing shifted, try a different method. The one that works for you is the one you don't forget to do.
Are personality tests useful at all?
Yes — as a starting point, not a conclusion. Frameworks like the Big Five (OCEAN) model have stronger scientific backing than MBTI and can give you a useful initial vocabulary. But treat any test result as a hypothesis to investigate, not a verdict to accept. If you get a different result next year, that's not a problem to solve — it's just more information.
What tools help with self-discovery?
The ones that remember you. A paper journal works. A pattern-tracking note on your phone works. An AI assistant that carries context across sessions works better than one that doesn't, because continuity is where insight actually lives.
Tools that reset every conversation force you to re-explain yourself forever, which is the opposite of getting somewhere.
How long does self-discovery take?
Longer than you want and shorter than you think. Journaling research suggests measurable shifts in self-awareness within 2-4 weeks of consistent practice. Bigger shifts — the ones that change how you move through the world — take months. It's not a deadline you can hit. It's a relationship with yourself that gets better with attention.
What if I don't like what I find?
You probably won't, in parts. That's a feature, not a bug. The stuff that's uncomfortable to see is usually the stuff worth seeing. What I'd say: don't skip the discomfort, but also don't marinate in it. Notice, name, move on. Most of what you find isn't a flaw. It's just information you didn't have before.
If anything here resonated, the method that changed the most for me was the memory one — having something that actually held context across weeks. One real conversation a day for a week is enough to know whether it fits the way you think.
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