Self-discovery and meaning making systems to try
Meaning making to me is creating a coherent existence. It’s making sense of my preferences, decisions, and experiences to build into a greater story interconnected with the universe. I abide by the existentialist theory that humans define their own purpose and values.
This process is extremely lonely and difficult to do one’s own, but thankfully philosophers and mystics have done it for millennia so that we have built up myths, symbologies, and frameworks to make things make sense.
The following is a non-comprehensive list of meaning making systems I have tried and enjoyed over the years. I invite you to dabble in what sounds intriguing to you and fall down your own rabbit holes of self-discovery.
QUESTIONNAIRES
The start of my meaning making began simply, by answering long questionnaires on my Livejournal blogs. I first determined what was meaningful to me through the practice of questioning and answering, both acts of examining truth in one’s self. From the seriousness of the Proust Questionnaire to the silliness of scrollable Myspace surveys, these were my way of exploring my life in threads, building an overall picture of the kind of individual I was becoming.
TRY: Journal or speak out loud some of your answers to the The Proust Questionnaire or 36 Questions in Love.
ASTROLOGY
Astrology is a centuries old practice that assigns meaning to the placement of various planets under twelve zodiac signs and houses. Like most novices, I grew up thinking there was only one astrological sign, aka the sun sign, that each person was born into.
I was born right at the transition point of Virgo and Libra, so for the longest time I determined my astrological sun sign through the dates written on magazine horoscopes and assumed I was a Libra. It wasn’t until I was twenty that I got a proper natal chart reading and realized how wrong I had been!
On one hand, I can see the fallacy of letting the common traits of a sign dictate your understanding of yourself. Libras are indecisive and I always assumed I was too, until I suddenly “became” an organized Virgo. This is why I don’t really find it interesting to reduce someone to their sun sign, rising sign, or even their big 3 (sun, moon, and rising).
Astrology became truly interesting to me once I delved into my entire chart and started piecing together its threads. I look to astrologers Chani Nicholas and Jo O’Neill for up-to-date readings, and have read books by Steven Forrest and Dane Rudhyar for deeper self-study.
TRY: Look at your North & South Node placements for karmic, spiritual learning. Look at your Midheaven (MC) placement to shed light on vocational purpose.
MBTI
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a questionnaire that categorizes you into one of sixteen types, loosely based on Carl Jung’s eight functions of consciousness.
I have a soft spot for MBTI as it was the first meaning making framework to unlock compassion for myself. Even though it’s now widely understood to be a pseudoscience, I still think any popular framework that allows for variation in personality can be a great conduit to better understanding, not only for ourselves but also for each other. Any meaning making system provides a shorthand for people to easily share how they perceive themselves. The self-diagnostic tool of MBTI makes this easily accessible, especially to those who don’t ascribe to spiritual meaning making systems.
Free internet MBTI assessments often explain types as a combination of letters, which leads to people over-identifying with the letters instead of researching the underlying cognitive functions. MBTI was my entrypoint into Carl Jung’s vast theories of psychology, and I strongly believe learning about the eight functions is the most beneficial aspect of knowing one’s MBTI type.
For example, as an INFJ I rely on Introverted Intuition (Ni) to make sense of the world through abstract insights and connections much more than I retain or deal with sensory details and facts. My inferior function, aka the opposite of Introverted Intuition, is Extraverted Sensing, which is acting on concrete experience in the present moment. Because this function is my least developed, my growth edge is to ground in the present, tend to my bodily needs, and be careful of sensory overwhelm.
TRY: Look at your type’s dominant function to see how you primarily engage with the world. Look at your inferior function to discover what commonly trips you up.
Last updated March 24, 2026. More coming!