I've written before about the three most well-known personality assessments I think everyone should take (Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Love Languages), and I still stand by the idea that people should be self-aware.

Knowing our strengths, weaknesses, and natural inclinations is the first step toward becoming a healthier person. When you're aware of why you react a certain way, what you're good at, and what you have trouble with, it makes it easier to either capitalize on your good qualities or work on the bad.

And after you've become self-aware, you can learn the types of the people in your life—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, significant others, bosses, co-workers—and figure out the best way to work with them.

1. Four Temperaments.

My obsession with personalities started with the four temperaments back in middle school. My friends and I were constantly trying to figure out ourselves and type other people. There are four basic types: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic.

Sanguines are outgoing and active, melancholics are creative and deep feelers, cholerics are independent and decisive, and phlegmatics are peaceful and relaxed. You can be more than one, which is called a blend, but there's normally one that's the most true to who you are.

Taking the test and reading a more in-depth description will provide you with more information, and it's super simple to understand!

2. True Colors.

I took this in my Career Planning course sophomore year of college. It not only helped me make sense of my characteristics, but why I was drawn to certain interests and professions.

Similar to the four temperaments, there are four colors you can be: blue, orange, green, and gold. Blues are nurturing and encourage unique expression, oranges are spontaneous and animated communicators, greens are logical and innovative, and golds are responsible and enjoy positions of authority. Of course, this is only a brief description, and more details can be found when you take the test and discover your type.

3. DiSC.

DiSC, like the previous two, has four possible options, but it's garnered more towards your professional style: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. A dominant person is goal-oriented and confident, someone with a high score of influence is optimistic and a people-person, a steady person is calm and dependable, and a conscientious person is objective and values quality.

I've taken this test twice over the past three years, and my results vary. I'm fairly certain my style is influence, but I may have to take it again and read up on it to be sure. Give it a try if you feel so inclined.

4. Strengths Finder.

Another test for corporate America, this personality indicator has too many options to describe, but their titles are pretty self-explanatory: achiever, activator, adaptability, analytical, arranger, belief, command, communication, competition, connectedness, consistency, context, deliberative, developer, discipline, empathy, focus, futuristic, harmony, ideation, includer, individualization, input, intellection, learner, maximizer, positivity, relator, responsibility, restorative, self-assurance, significance, strategic, and woo (which apparently stands for winning others over).

Unlike the others, this is an official test that requires an account and costs the big bucks—20 to be exact—to find out your top five. But it comes with a few pdfs based on your results and a free ebook that you can access from anywhere? Soooo. If you're like me and are embarrassingly desperate to learn about your own strengths and the strengths you're most compatible with, then it may be worth it. If not, that's understandable. Another option is to buy the book for a few dollars less, read up on the strengths, and decide for yourself what you are. Unless you like your money and want to keep it, which is....really fair, actually.

5. The Big Five.

Used most commonly by psychologists, the Big Five determines a person's conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. Apparently the acronyms to remember the types are CANOE or OCEAN, just in case you ever forget.

Conscientiousness refers to how self-disciplined, organized, and dutiful one is as opposed to spontaneity. Agreeableness is the degree to which one is friendly, compassionate, and cooperative. Neurotocism measures emotional stability on a scale from confidence to sensitivity and anxiety. Someone who is open to experience tends to have an appreciation for the arts, adventure, creativity, and emotion. The range of extraversion goes from reserved and reflection to energetic and sociable.

There are a lot of places to take this test. This one refers to neurotocism as "emotional stability" and openness to experience as "intellect/imagination," and this one calls neurotocism "negative emotionality" and openness to experience as "open-mindedness" (which is a fairly accurate synonym). This one calls them all by the official names. Fair warning: I'm not sure which website has the most accurate results, so go with whichever.

The truth is that we're all different. I'm a melancholic-sanguine, blue-orange, influencer who is open to experiences and whose strengths are individualization, input, connectedness, futuristic, and adaptability. That's a unique combination, making me different from someone who may have one or more personality traits in common with me. Because each of us are unique, one personality description isn't going to tell you who you are.

The descriptions of being choleric or green or conscientious or any combination of strengths won't be enough to fully capture who you are. So you need the Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, and Love Languages from before, and you need these tests, too. You need to know what unique combination makes up who you are, because, at the risk of sounding too "Veggie Tales"—God made you special.

I'm not exactly on board with the whole "you have to know yourself in order to know God" because never in the Bible does it state that that's how it all works. But I am on board with God being creative and giving you certain qualities for a reason, and I believe in understanding what those qualities are so that you can grow and be a blessing to those in your life.