Unpack Your Personality: Let Your Inner Guide Be Your Travel Guide

By Nina Zapala

As an award-winning hospitality professional, Nina Zapala has traveled far and wide. Her debut book Unpack Your Personality: Let Your Inner Guide Be Your Travel Guide, offers a fresh philosophy on travel. She infuses personality typing with a spiritual understanding, suggesting travelers use their next trip as a classroom to kick-start a journey to their true selves. She writes with the hope that her work will find its way to individuals unimpressed with common approaches in these unconventional times.

 

Along with perspectives from hundreds of travelers worldwide, Zapala shares practical insights from her mentor, spiritual psychologist Dr. Nix, Ph.D. In addition, the book contains liberating lessons that came from her seven-year life tsunami, which led to a life reinvention. Today, she realizes her tsunami helped her break free from society's pressures and uncover what truly matters in life. She shares how you can do the same.

 

Travel Reflections: Hundreds of Travelers Sharing Their Thoughts

 

Zapala's career was booming, but her priorities were shifting. Her routine marketing questions—why book this resort, destination, or restaurant—began to evolve as she embarked on a self-awareness journey. Her questions gradually changed. She began seeking answers to navigate her tumultuous tsunami. What she discovered was shocking:

• Many women were frustrated due to constantly meeting another's expectations while ignoring their own needs.
• While the dream career was always the goal, these women agreed their career-obsessed lifestyles left them unfulfilled.
• So many of these women travelers shared that they didn't know themselves, which often led to unrelenting anxiety and a plethora of other maladies.  
• The questions, how did I get here, who am I, and what's next, were the main topics of discussion.
• Many women had gotten caught in a crisis of epic proportions when they realized they had become stuck in what is and were afraid to step into the unknown.

 

Women travelers from all corners of the world—moms on a mission, whip-smart CEOs, and trailblazing entrepreneurs—shared their thoughts. Zapala totally resonated with their findings and feelings of emptiness, discontentment, and unawareness. In these moments, she knew things had to change for herself and for women just like you!

 

A Few Book Takeaways

• A book that provides you with the directions to discover yourself.
• A guidebook to ignite a powerful journey into spiritual personality typing—the soul's role in personality typing; it's life-changing.
• A travel guidebook that proposes a new way to travel using intention to learn what triggers your behaviors, what they reveal, and how to let them go. It's a roadmap to self-understanding.

 

Unpack Your Personality is a practical yet profound read that explores attitudes, mindsets, and actions. Be prepared to learn a lot about yourself and take steps to immediately boost your confidence, gain clarity, and find your true self. It's a spirit-led travel guide for journeys that change your life.

 

Don't wait any longer. This book is for you if you're ready to discover the secrets of living a joyful life and traveling a path that is exquisitely yours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nina Zapala
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989179619

Book preview

Unpack Your Personality:

Let Your Inner Guide Be Your Travel Guide

Nina Zapala

Copyright © 2023 Nina Zapala

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embedded in editorial articles and reviews.

The information in this book is not intended to replace the advice of a psychologist, mental health practitioner, or the reader’s own physician or medical professional. Please consult a medical professional in matters related to health, especially in the case of existing medical conditions, and before starting, stopping, or changing any medication. Readers are solely responsible for their own healthcare and mental healthcare decisions. The author does not accept responsibility for any adverse effects individuals may claim to experience, whether directly or indirectly, from the information contained in this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zapala, Nina.

Unpack Your Personality: Let Your Inner Guide Be Your Travel Guide / Nina Zapala.—first edition. pages cm.

Summary: Unpack Your Personality offers thought-provoking and soul-shifting ideas using personality typing, spirituality, and travel as tools for self-discovery. —Provided by publisher.

ISBN 979-8-9891796-0-2 (pbk) – ISBN 979-8-9891796-1-9 (ebook)

[1. Popular Psychology Personality Study 2. Personal Transformation Self-Help 3. Mental and Spiritual Healing]

LCCN 2023918802

This book is typeset in Times New Roman and Noto Serif Display.

Cover design by Nina Zapala and Elizabeth Soto

Cover art and illustrations by Kasia Terczyńska.

Edited and interior layout designed by Kayla Davenport.

Printed in the United States of America.

First edition.

Independently published by Nina Zapala | www.ninazapala.com

For more information about special discounts on bulk purchases, contact Nina Zapala at www.ninazapala.com/connect.

To contact nonprofit partner Neighborhood Forest, Giving Trees to Children visit www.neighborhoodforest.org/.

To my wise son, an old soul with a generous spirit. Your search for knowledge dazzles me and your quiet calmness grounds me. Thank you for choosing me this time around to be your mom. You’ve gifted me with a deep, heart-opening love that I will carry with me throughout all eternity. Love you J. — Mom.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction and Book Takeaways

PART ONE

Chapter 1 | The Collective Illusions of Travel and Typology

Chapter 2 | Travel Therapy for Self-Discovery

Chapter 3 | Travel with Intention: A How-To Guide

PART TWO

Chapter 4 | Myers-Briggs®️ 1940s

Chapter 5 | Spiritual Personality Typing for the 21st Century

Chapter 6 | Sister Shenanigans Unpacked in Hawaii

PART THREE

Take Off with Sensing Perceivers

Chapter 7 | The Spirited Traveler (ESTP)

Chapter 8 | The Active Traveler (ISTP)

Chapter 9 | The Playful Traveler (ESFP)

Chapter 10 | The Abstract Traveler (ISFP)

Take Off with Sensing Judgers

Chapter 11 | The Dutiful Traveler (ESTJ)

Chapter 12 | The Grounded Traveler (ISTJ)

Chapter 13 | The Attentive Traveler (ESFJ)

Chapter 14 | The Kindly Traveler (ISFJ)

Take Off with Intuitive Feelers

Chapter 15 | The Harmonious Traveler (ENFJ)

Chapter 16 | The Insightful Traveler (INFJ)

Chapter 17 | The Expressive Traveler (ENFP)

Chapter 18 | The Seeking Traveler (INFP)

Take Off with Intuitive Thinkers

Chapter 19 | The Assured Traveler (ENTJ)

Chapter 20 | The Inventive Traveler (INTJ)

Chapter 21 | The Curious Traveler (ENTP)

Chapter 22 | The Ingenious Traveler (INTP)

PART FOUR

Chapter 23 | The End or a New Adventure?

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Resources

Introduction and Book Takeaways

We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already. — J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, thought to be a Seeking traveler (INFP).

Most of us don’t give ourselves a minute to jump off the merry-go-round of life, let alone take the time to envision what we truly want. Allow yourself moments of stillness to plant the seeds for golden opportunities. It allows you to rise above the dense fog of life that has seemingly trapped so many of us. I know, because I lived it for decades. When you are not present with life, it causes an underlying anxiety, an unshakable emptiness, and an unknowingness that often leads to unhappiness. For me, it led to a seven-year life tsunami. The storm of a lifetime! I didn’t take the time for stillness. I was too busy doing what I thought I was supposed to do and be, meeting everyone else’s expectations, ignoring my gut instincts. There were so many wake-up calls, but I never picked up on the messages from my Divine self. The sad thing is this is not just a Nina thing.

As a writer, my travel career allowed me to speak with hundreds of whip-smart entrepreneurs, savvy CEOs, and moms on a mission. These women had accomplished careers. They ran multi-billion-dollar companies and were innovative leaders in their fields. It was evident they felt proud of what they had accomplished. Yet somehow, all the money, accolades, and climbing the corporate ladder had led them deeper into the malaise of unknowing, anxiety, and emptiness. These women seemed to have it all from society’s standards: a luxury lifestyle, a corner office, the $100,000 vacation, married or single. People thought this about me, too. We had all the stuff money could buy, but still, something was missing. As I witnessed theirs and my own malaise, I became curious to figure out what was behind it all. Do we feel empty because we have neglected our true selves or because we haven’t accepted our powerful femininity? For the most part, Western societies have stripped away our ancestral, feminine roots. Our culture has taught us to man up—work hard, push, compete, and win at all costs—the antithesis of our feminine spirit. Is this imbalance the reason the dense fog of anxiety and emptiness remains active in our lives? Have we become so separated from our true selves that we don’t recognize ourselves? While I can’t answer this question for you, I do know it’s one we, as women, should ponder. These women travelers and I had several things in common. None of us knew ourselves, understood what truly mattered, or had a clear vision for our lives. What we could define was the weariness, the powering down to please others, and taking a back seat in life. The years of asking for permission had become exhausting, yet many of us knew deep down we were losing ourselves to belong and be loved. Ultimately, we realized it was about being true to ourselves, living a life from our truth, and doing what really matters to live a legacy life.

For those who opened up, laughed, cried, and shared their messy life stories, I thank you. Your conversations touched and humbled me. I learned that we all want meaningful lives. We want lives built on a foundation of purpose and potential, what we’ve been called to do, not some watered-down version scripted by society, family, or country culture. We also realized that to love yourself is to know yourself fully. These conversations ignited a series of questions. How do I get to know myself beyond my career, my role as a mom, wife, or caregiver? Why am I here? How did I get here? Is this all there is? If we want different, we have to think differently!

Spending time with these women had me questioning my life. It was time for me to break free of the collective mindset, which meant giving up a career in luxury travel, getting divorced, moving… Essentially, it was a life do-over. I was restyling my life to fit who I wanted to be instead of trying to fit into a life that told me who to be! Not an easy undertaking, but definitely worth it. As soon as I made my desires known to the Universe, a seven-year tsunami hit the shores of my life. It was exactly what my beautiful soul needed to live in harmony, aligned with my true self, and to liberate myself and flourish here on Earth School.

During my relentless and challenging life tsunami, it occurred to me that I had been conditioned to think about my life from a back-ass-wards approach. It’s all wrong, prescription-based and sanctioned by the belief that the external world has all the answers. It is a mindset consumed by the consumptive needs of the world that holds no regard for your needs as a woman or what you need to fulfill yourself. Personality typing with a spiritual understanding is how I found my way. It began to release me from the dense fog that trapped me in an illusion that never fulfilled itself. As I came to this realization, mountains of fear, uncertainty, and a blank roadmap stared back at me. Yet, it also brought a profound sense of courage and freedom that kept me going through the dark times in my life—a refocusing from superficial spirituality to inner spirit knowings.

Unpack Your Personality: Let Your Inner Guide Be Your Travel Guide is a metaphor for life. It’s for those with deep desires to know themselves and live each day welcoming moments of self-discovery to encourage a more realized you. The power of this book lies in its ability to help you reveal your true self and know genuine freedom in your life. It is a life based on pure potential. You will also begin to identify your distinct place within the collective tapestry of Divine Intelligence. It is knowing who you really are. Without knowing this truth, purpose, joy, and meaningful living is hard to come by. My hope and wish is that this book opens you up to a new personality paradigm, spiritual personality typing—a new philosophy that relies on the theory that your soul is in control. It’s a modern-day concept that doesn’t follow textbook or prescribed thinking. Instead, it explores the intimate relationship between your sacred personality type (logical/ego mind) and your true self (spirit/Divine mind). This fresh approach illustrates how the soul and typology work harmoniously to create, expand, and evolve your persona in endless ways.

This book is designed to ignite a questioning process, provoke awakenings, and create soul-shifting insights by using personality typing, spirituality, and travel as a classroom for self-discovery. It helps you see beyond the collective trappings of travel as a consumptive experience. Instead, it calls you to explore intentional travel to propel you along your awakening journey.

My life was, and is, so blessed with amazing women who encouraged and supported me during my tsunami. Now, I want to return the favor. My desire is to share what I’ve learned. Instead of you having to face a directionless roadmap as I did, I offer a roadmap to self-understanding to help you navigate these times in your life. Unpack Your Personality is an expansive body of work that dives into psychology (the study of personality typing), spirituality (nonphysical reality), and how travel is the best classroom to explore your true self—the who of who you really are.

A Few Book Takeaways

In the pages ahead, learning, discovering, and exploring using spiritual personality typing will help you develop a personalized roadmap to your true self. You will be able to unpack what you don’t need while revealing what truly matters: your true self. It proposes that you use travel as a classroom for self-discovery, exploring personality and spirituality in real-time. Please note, in order to fully understand and benefit from the book, you must know your personality. I recommend Personality Club, MBTI, or Truity to retake or take a test. Here is a list of beautiful things you are likely to unpack about yourself:

Understand Spiritual Personality Typing™ and use its benefits long after unpacking your suitcase.

Master the art of intentional travel to explore, know, and identify with your true self.

Plant seeds of self-discovery to nurture a rewarding and meaningful life.

Identify sabotaging behaviors and learn how to stop them, while realizing challenges are opportunities for personal development.

Determine how to make smarter choices without sacrificing yourself. It starts by booking enriching vacations for self-awareness.

Gain clarity around decision-making. After all, isn’t life one big decision tree?

Know what you want and where you want to go, in life and on the road, which makes trends, reviews, and external world influences less likely to derail things in your life.

Understand how your self-experiences and your personality type shape your reality.

Each travel archetype chapter highlights the most desirable places to visit, your travel perks and triggers, potential romantic options, parenting, and more.

You’ll understand typology and use its benefits long after you’ve unpacked your suitcases.

Your travel archetype chapter highlights the best places to visit, your travel perks and triggers, potential romantic options, parenting, and more.

Return home not numbingly acquiescing to the daily grind, but alive, renewed, and vibrant.

PART ONE

Travel the Way Forward

Chapter 1 | The Collective Illusions of Travel and Typology

Collective illusions,social lies that lead individuals to go along with what they think the majority believes, despite privately disagreeing —Todd Ross, author of Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, thought to be an Inventive traveler (INTJ).

A

re travel and personality typing illusions real? Let’s explore this topic further, starting with travel. Have you ever taken a vacation while doubting your destination of choice? You relied on a best friend because they loved the area, or your research revealed hundreds of positive reviews. Yet, something is off. Have you fallen for the seductive traps, the false illusions of travel marketing and social media, which promise Shangri-La escapes and heavenly getaways? Are these unrealistic expectations? We’ve grown to love the juicy dramas on Netflix, where movies and TV series occur in stunning places and everything’s flawless—the people, the location, the rooms. A place where the resort staff is at your beck and call and treat you like royalty. But are you living vicariously through the characters in these imaginary dramas or your favorite social media influencer? Do these narratives influence the way you travel? Are you sipping the cultural Kool-Aid, believing everything should be perfect? How many of us pack our bags, leave the house with illusions of grandeur, arrive, and then boom—reality sets in? Take it from me; I’ve been in the travel industry for more than two decades, and travel isn’t always what it seems on the big screen or a smartphone.

How many of us have bought into the delusions of travel? Is it any wonder we return home and think, I need a vacation from my vacation? Why is this? I believe we’ve become so separated from ourselves and the realities of life that we lie to ourselves about the truths of travel. Have you ever taken a day or two to ask yourself what you genuinely desire in a vacation? It’s easy to understand why we opt for another’s review. Or is it a new travel’ism analysis paralysis, defined as the inability to choose because of information overload? Frankly, who has the time to process millions, if not billions, of results? It becomes mind-numbing, so we give up or rely on the reviews of a stranger. What’s their personality type, their values, likes, and dislikes? I say it’s one more reason why understanding your personality type is essential. It brings clarity, and when you have clarity about who you are, choices become easier. And isn’t life one big decision tree?

So what is the soul-ution? I advocate that we get real about vacationing and understand that travel marketers, television shows, and movies are in the business of sales and entertainment. Do you think television shows and movies have become too predictable? Dare I say dull? Is that what we truly desire on vacation—predictable, formulaic, and expected? Can we all agree that we might as well stay home for these experiences?

Over the past two decades, I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with hundreds of women travelers who shared extraordinary tales, such as meeting a partner on vacation and realizing they only lived two blocks away from each other, or falling in love with a place and then calling it home years later. How many of us get lost and are forced to take a detour that directs us to the most stunning coconut-white, sandy beach, while around the corner is the island’s most delicious shrimp shack, or we meet a charming stranger? These supposed imperfect moments are golden opportunities that lead to the most sumptuous experiences, which aren’t predictive, scripted, or media-driven. These are golden moments that touch you deep down in your soul. It moves beyond your external senses that vie for your attention. No, it’s something more. Experiences like these permeate you deeply, stirring you to question yourself and the role you are here to play on Earth. Moments like these excite your soul and remind you of the hopes and dreams of millions who have come before you.

Discovering yourself through personality type archetypes means fully embracing the foundational aspects of who you are, the untruths and the truths, and then choosing where to go. Please know I don’t sugarcoat personality functions, nor will I stereotype; there’s enough of that already. Each chapter archetype describes the good, not-so-good, the ugly, and the beautiful aspects of what it means to be human. I’m passionate about you coming face-to-face with yourself and getting to the who of who you really are: your authentic self. It’s clarity on steroids. Because, you know, fully experiencing yourself is the grandest life experience of all. If you don’t know yourself, how can you fully love yourself? What? Yep, to see yourself as exactly who you are in the moment brings a sense of peace you’ll want to return to often. I adore referring to these times as golden moments, as they are a pure reflection of the true self. If you’re reading this book, you’ve accepted an invitation to rethink everything you believe about yourself. Buckle up, as you’re about to embark on a life-changing journey to open yourself up to what truly matters.

What’s so beautiful about vacationing is it consistently delivers unknown circumstances, which prompt a sink-or-swim mentality. It’s the grace of travel. Believe it or not, I think it’s why so many of us crave travel. We unconsciously seek the unknown, as the voice deep within us (our spirit mind) tells us that’s where life’s most spectacular treasures await. There is no more fulfilling journey in life than the journey to the true self! Even better, the marketing gimmicks, influencers, and analysis paralysis will take a backseat as you develop profound confidence about what you want and don’t want, making choices much easier on the road and in life.

Let’s take a closer look at another way cultural illusions affect us…

Have Cultural Illusions Infiltrated Personality Typing?

Consider the sheer number of memes, GIFs, and those ridiculous four-by-four squares that define your personality type in the most pathetic ways. There is no end to the rabbit hole of personality typing. Unfortunately, the negative consequences of ignorant stereotyping are far-reaching, particularly online. Don’t get me wrong, social media can be good, but it comes down to the user. Yet, I often feel like a spectator watching a train wreck with all the shenanigans and stereotyping around personality typing. In all seriousness, how can one type be more intelligent, creative, or artistic than another? These are reckless claims, often used to gain likes or followers. I personally don’t believe the mother-daughter duo, Myers and Briggs, ever intended for the Myers-Briggs theory to be belittling. Like it or not, we live in a society that labels things and people. We carelessly throw around words without a second thought about how they impact people. We believe in narratives without questioning or thinking. It’s common for people whose opinions differ from those of the so-called collective to become targets of online bullying and stereotyping—a GIF palooza. Add in those ridiculous four-by-four grids listing absurdly limited qualities for each of the sixteen personality types. What you get is a distasteful recipe for cultural delusions about personality typing. Keep scrolling if you see a personality type grid or a so-called guru claiming one type is better than another. It’s a travesty. A big fat lie! We’ve all witnessed how posts go viral making fun of people. Sadly enough, some believe what they see, read, and are told about their personality typing. People assume these wildly inaccurate comments must be genuine because someone said so. Please don’t. And you know I won’t encourage this stinking thinking regarding spiritual personality typing.

Discernment andCritical Thinking: Vital to Living a Truth-Filled Life

Think for a moment. Who do we most admire? It’s always the outliers, the ones who dare to be different. Why? We’re hungry for authenticity because we all want to be true to who we really are. I know this as an absolute truth because I lived it. I lied to myself for years, believing I was being honest with myself, until I woke up and realized I wasn’t. And don’t believe everything you read, see, or hear on social media or what the media tells you. Discernment is key. Remember the media’s mantra: if it bleeds, it leads—fear porn on steroids, but it gets ratings, likes, and follows. And, as you know, social media uses algorithms to foster herd mentality. When I think