Best Fit Type is the term we use to describe the Style Type you decide is right for you. Best Fit Type is a process, and coming to learn more about your Best Fit Type can be a lifelong process.
Best Fit Type means you’ve identified a Type that fits you best – not perfectly. You are a person – a unique and beautiful individual — not a Type, and so we don’t expect that any description of a personality type will describe you 100%. That said, for your chosen Type to truly be Best Fit, we aim for about 80% of the descriptions for it being applicable and right for you.
For Best Fit Type to also be right for you, the descriptions for your Type need to fit you better than the descriptions for the other 15 Types.
Identify what’s innate and true for you
Best Fit Type gets you to a place where you can identify and claim your innate way of being, and we use it as a basis for moving forward in understanding who you are and why things work out for you (and don’t) the way they do.
Finding your Best Fit Type can be tricky, and take some time and patience. The process of coming to your Best Fit Type often requires some reflection and an attitude of allowing. The mindset you adopt when going through a self-discovery Best Fit Type process shapes your results, so we always suggest you have a “shoes off”, “at home”, relaxed frame of mind, where you can truly be yourself.
It’s important to keep in mind that your Type is innate, it’s something you were born with, like other personal characteristics you have. Your Type describes how you go about life when it is most effortless and easy. It’s who you are when you’re “in the zone” and at your best – when you are your best version of yourself.
Preference vs behavior
It’s important to understand that Type doesn’t predict behavior and the correlation between behavior and Type can be tenuous at times. That’s because your innate preferences and your learned behavior can spring from different places. All of us are capable of learning skills and developing behaviors (like our parents drummed into us from a young age to say please and thank-you!), but that doesn’t mean those skills and behaviors represent your innate preferences.
The more life experience you have, the more skills and learned behaviors you have likely acquired. And these skills and behaviors can start, after many years to feel easy and ingrained, even natural. Getting to Best Fit Type isn’t about denying or ignoring those skills and behaviors – but it is about recognizing that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you prefer to.
If you get rid of all the can do, should do, have to things, if you could just be yourself fully without any constraints or restraints, without any need to reign yourself in or make yourself different, without any expectations – how would you be, and who would you be? This is where Best Fit Type comes in.
Additional reading
There are a range of links to additional reading at the bottom here that will help you to further explore how to tease apart learned behavior and get closer to innate preferences. Make sure you read those articles and take your time as you go through the process of coming to your very Best Fit Type.
You may find this Tips and TripUps document a useful resource too!
Going back in time
Some people find it helpful to refer back to their youth to identify Best Fit Type – to a time when the demands that you develop particular skills or behave in particular ways were less pressing, before you learned lots of other behaviors and skills.
You may also find it useful to reflect on times when you have had energy and great health (if your health and energy are not as healthy as you would like, doing a Best Fit Type process can be challenging if you are only referring to your current state of being). Consider the you that you were when you believed that you could do anything that you felt drawn to.
Get your Style Type Report
We use your Style Type Report extensively in the Your Type of Style online program, so you’ll be needing your very own copy if you don’t already have it.
If you’ve not yet found your Best Fit Type, you can do the process here as part of Your Type of Style. You have two opportunities to go through the process, at the end of which you will be provided with a green button to press to Get Your Report. We strongly encourage you to take your time to complete the Best Fit Type process.
During Your Type of Style, you will have many opportunities to really delve into your Style Type – you will come to a greater understanding of the letters your Type represent and what they really mean.
You may find that the Modules focused specifically around Type (starting with Module 4) provide you with useful feedback to clarify and check your Type. If it seems that you haven’t yet found our Best Fit Type, you can redo the Best Fit Process and receive another Style Type Report.
Welcome to the wonderful and beautiful world of Style Type
You may also discover through participating in Your Type of Style that you have indeed arrived at your Best Fit Type, in which case we welcome you to the beautiful and ongoing process of learning more about your innate preferences and who you really are.
Find Your Style Type and Get Your Style Type Report
Find Your Style Type
If you don’t know your psychological type, our Find Your Type Best Fit Type self-discovery process will guide you through it, step by step.
Already Know Your Style Type?
If you already know your psychological type, you may find our self-discovery process an interesting take on coming to Best Fit Type.
An Additional Type Tool and Resources
Smarter About People is an online quiz that helps you find out the different ways you can understand your personality as well as provide some insights into the behavior of others. Developed by Sterling Bates of Step Research, a colleague and friend of 16 Style Types, the free quiz will help you learn more about yourself and provide you with a range of reports which explore your personality through a range of lenses, including identifying your Superpowers and your Go-To Behaviors.
If you are still Style Type uncertain, you may find the Smarter About People free quiz a helpful additional process which gets you closer to identifying and claiming your best fit Style Type. Please allow a little bit of time to do the free quiz, and see it as a complementary process to the 16 Style Types process – not a replacement.
Like us, Sterling and his team at Smarter About People believe that the more you know about yourself and the more others know about you and how you naturally like to experience life, the easier life becomes – the easier relationships become, the greater the respect and harmony between people – and the more authentically you can express your innate and beautiful self!
Try the quiz here (remember to answer thinking about your innate preferences – that is what is easy and natural, rather than what you can do, or have done in (behavior). This will help you get the most accurate result.
Additional Reading:
DICHOTOMIES
How Are You Energized? Understanding Extraversion and Introversion
What Do You See? Differences in Perception – Sensing and iNtuition
Life on the Outside: How to Tell if You Prefer Judging or Perceiving
Women Who Prefer Thinking: How Do You Know If You Prefer Thinking?
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE JOURNEY
Embracing Your Style Type Journey and Dealing with Potential Triggers
