Mediocre or ordinary is like a swear word. Like that’s the last thing you would want to be.

At their best, fours are warm, compassionate, introspective, expressive, creative, intuitive, supportive and rather refined. At their worst they are depressed, self-conscious, guilt-ridden, moralistic, withdrawn, stubborn, moody and self-absorbed.

A Four needs careful treatment by those who love them. Be very supportive and praise them for their creativity and talents. Having self-esteem issues are common with a Four and they need to learn to love themselves for who and what they are. Be patient with your Four and try to get him to see himself through your appreciative eyes.

Fours wallow in melancholy and don’t want to be cheered up – they’re getting deeply in touch with their feelings. They hate to be told they’re too sensitive and that they’re over-reacting all the time. So don’t mention that okay? Sometimes, they’ll let you cheer them up a bit but they really feel more comfortable being morose. They are self-absorbed and this is often reflected in their conversations. They are easily stirred to jealousy and can be overly critical which then affects their outlook.

But they make great friends. They’re empathic, supportive, gentle, playful, passionate and witty. They bond easily with others by revealing all in a gamble of trust. Until they start to get ‘needy’. This is something they must be careful of or they will drive some types away.

Think of your prima donnas, art-house film directors, creators of deep and meaningful uniqueness and those lost in fairytales. They always seem to feel that their life is ethereal or intangible and they’re just waiting for their reality to start.

Fours are often very insightful and can suddenly make a comment that becomes a light bulb moment for you. You will feel astonished, but it’s quite normal for a Four. They often achieve what they’re determined to achieve and are quite innovative. Some may describe their Four as ‘a real character’ and they are! They can be quite flamboyant in their presentation and many Fours often live amidst clutter.

The world needs Fours. So love your Four and his/her uniqueness which delivers an interesting, if not unusual, flavour to life.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

“THINK SIMPLE” AS MY OLD MASTER USED TO SAY – MEANING REDUCE THE WHOLE OF ITS PARTS INTO THE SIMPLEST TERMS, GETTING BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES.

During my youth years playing softball, I landed a position on a well respected team. One of the things our coaches stressed was “the basics.” Even our throwing warm-ups started off as drills practicing basic form before we got into a full throw. We can take these principles into our daily lives also. For example, when we find ourselves not where we want to be in life. Or there is something about ourselves we want to change.

Ok, so you’re not where you want to be in life. Ask yourself “what do I want out of life?” and “why do I want it?” You need to be able to explain to yourself in writing so you personally understand why you want a certain thing. Now it’s time to dig a little deeper. What’s your reason for your want? Is it a result of your conditioning? Or does it come from your very essence? To me, this is getting back to the first principle. Finally, what steps will you take to get what you want?

It seems very simple to keep asking “why” until we get to our basic true self. Maybe it’s so simple that we don’t take it seriously and completely miss it altogether. Sometimes we will find our answers in the simplest form. Be curious about yourself and ask “why.” Get to know yourself a little better. Another thing that has helped me know myself better is finding out my personality type. Now I’m more accepting of myself and my differences. I understand my true nature and can better distinguish it from my conditioning.

Like in my softball days of practicing basics. We need to keep practicing “thinking simple” in our lives. Without practice, we get sloppy. What a beautiful quote and wise words to live by.

I’ve looked everywhere for help: identifying my personality type INFJ, Highly Sensitive and innate Empath; identifying blocked Chakras; holistic methods to conquer anxiety and depression; learning what cycle and zodiac the Moon was in the day I was born (Cancer which explains my personality types) mediation with the Chopra Center, restorative yoga, identifying my passions…you name it, I’ve read/done it all for the sake of obtaining and holding on to peace.

Don’t get me wrong…some days are absolutely amazing; I flow and share to hopefully pass on peace to others. Other days…I feel like a hypocrite! Demanding that everyone love and accept themselves unconditionally, always feel worthy, block out negativity etc. meanwhile I am experiencing an internal struggle. It’s not enough to know many others who also promote positive thinking/feeling are also experiencing personal struggles; I expect more from ME! During past few days I’ve been ready to throw in the towel but again…I expect more from ME so I will re-group and continue my quest for peace.

People will judge and have their say but until you walk in my shoes…you will never understand that it’s not as simple as “getting over it”! I am Highly Sensitive and yes I feel more than most but I am determined, strong willed and I have never been and will never be a quitter!

Writing has always been therapeutic so I feel stronger as I write these last few lines. I hope you will share your story because it helps to know you are not alone.

Smooches,

SereneNSassy

This kind of attachment to the quality of our work and/or relationships can be a mixed blessing for Aspies. While it aids us in creating masterpieces of intellectual and personal accomplishments, it also creates a devastating scene in the wake of rejection – nobody likes to see their masterpiece shamed.

Though rejection can be brutal, we have to realize that it’s not a reflection on our personal worth. If a friend or colleague rejects our friendship, it’s not because we’re not a quality friend; it simply means that our interests or focuses or personality types just don’t correlate well. Similarly, if our work is rejected or put down, it does not mean that our work – or, more pressingly, our skillset – is deficient. All that it means is that it wasn’t the right concept for the right situation, and we can use that knowledge to better judge those situations in the future.

No matter how many times or how many ways you have been rejected, remember this: you are an incredibly unique individual with a specialized skillset of which some people can only dream. Though you may experience rejection today, know that you will return triumphant – just by being you. Keep in mind that you are a wonderful human being, and that no one can pass judgement over your worth. Rejection is not a time to withdraw into your safe-zone; it is a time to store that information away for future use, remember how great you truly are, and smile at the awesome learning event you just experienced.

Some famous INFJs:

• Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter
• Goethe
• Mel Gibson
• Mother Teresa
• Martin Luther King
• Nelson Mandela
• Nicole Kidman
• James Wilson from House M.D.

That, I still don’t understand. However, it’s true that I get too emotional. Intuition seems to be my partner on the go.

Here according to the site of the test I took:

Related articles

• Being INFJ (rorschachcoffee.typepad.com)
• Myers-Briggs (redskywalkeronearth.wordpress.com)
• Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging (lovelikepoesia.wordpress.com)
• INFJ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INFJ)

• Portrait of an INFJ

Art Credit: “Afternoon Tea Party” by Mary Cassatt

What happens to a dream . . . gone awry? High school English teacher. That was the dream. But, so far it hasn’t worked out quite like I imagined. After spending a year of hiatus doing random odd jobs and avoiding teaching, I decided it was time to fly. I landed a position as an English and Creative Writing Teacher at one of the toughest schools in the district. I’m no stranger to challenge. And seven months later? I’ve resigned because of my worsening health, due in part to the job itself. Only in retrospect, I conclude that it was quite possibly the most stressful, time-consuming, draining, unfulfilling thing I’ve ever done.

What went wrong? During my field work and student teaching, I enjoyed teaching for the most part; it seemed like a fit for the future. I planned and re-planned. I added the extra kick to make the material interesting. The smallest comments from the students could make my day, even an “Oh, I get it.” I looked forward to the classroom. But now that I’ve actually taught, it’s simple: I realize there are more things I don’t like about teaching high school than I do like.

“Know thyself.” A wise man once said it, and it kinda stuck with humanity. I think I’ve made my fair share of unwise career choices just because I don’t know myself well enough. So this time, I’m gonna avoid another train wreck. My solution? Taking the Myers Briggs Personality Types Test. (I highly recommend the book Do What You Are by Paul and Barbara Tieger, which was my resource for the test and career suggestion info.) I found out I’m an INTJ!

In short, the whole high school teaching thing wouldn’t have worked out because of my traits as an INTJ: (1) I’m a perfectionist. There are far too many uncontrollable variables in the classroom, so even if my part goes well, the day could still be a disaster. In addition, there’s not enough down time in teaching for me to put in the extra effort that I’d like to in order to perfect the lessons. (2) I’m a brainstormer. I struggle to communicate simplified versions of my abstract thoughts. The students often complained that I didn’t explain things well, while I felt that we weren’t going deep enough. I guess there’s only so deep you can go intellectually with regular English ninth graders. (3) I think logically and fail to consider emotions. I could rarely predict the emotional reactions of my students to my rules, classroom choices, or work load. As a result, most of them hated me, got upset regularly, and couldn’t connect with or understand me. With no emotional connection to the teacher, they wouldn’t work and made my room a playground most days.  (4) I expect too much of others. The students could never live up to my standards because more than half of them, on a daily basis, didn’t even attempt the work, much less strive to do it correctly. Not to get into politics, but I believe this was largely due to their upbringing as being dependent on the government to provide everything. Most of their parents didn’t graduate and/or work. Work wasn’t seen as an essential part of a successful future. Why work when you can get money without working? (5) I expect too much of myself. I’m partly to blame for taking the job when it was almost humanly impossible. I wasn’t compatible with that school or environment, but since I like to push myself, I think sometimes that I’m a superhero capable of any feat. In reality, I’m not cut out for every job. I can’t do everything.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons user J.J.

I’m supposed to be a scientist? I was shocked to find that some of the suggested careers for my personality type were military leaders, business administrators, lawyers, scientists, and computer programmers. If you know me, maybe you’re laughing. I’ve never, in a million years, dreamed of any of these jobs. Remember: English-nerdy = me. But then there were a few that sound much more like me: college-level teacher (I’ve definitely pondered it many times.), librarian (I applied to work at a library just yesterday.), and corporate strategist (Plan is my middle name.).

So here’s to doing something I’m good at, love, thrive in. Let the search begin.

Shinny up. Want to take a personality type test and see some career suggestions? Here are two thorough online tests based on the Myers Briggs: HumanMetrics and 16Personalities. If you already know your personality type, read through some common careers for your type. Or just have fun by browsing through various famous people who have your personality type.

A part of me agrees – primarily because I think the Zodiac, like MBTI, does have some value in the workplace.  Any model or framework that type-casts people is dangerous when used inappropriately, but such models can be helpful in understanding the ways that different talent management initiatives will impact attraction and retention differently, depending on the employee.  That’s why we segment by generations too.  Nobody (I hope) really thinks that someone born on 1st January 1982 is going to be highly narcissistic, whereas if they had been born one day earlier, they would have been team players.

That doesn’t mean that we can assume that people will always respond a particular way if they’re Gen X (guilty), an Aquarius (guilty) or an INTJ (guilty again), but it does help us to understand that the way we might react to an initiative will be different to how others will.  Whether you believe in the validity of the Zodiac, the Generations, or the MBTI, they do give us a framework for broadening our perspective.

Talent Segmentation is a critical component of Strategic Workforce Planning, but does need to be used carefully.  When you’re using these frameworks as a method for determining whether someone is suitable for a position, as opposed to ways that different groups of people may be attracted, motivated, and retained in your organisation, then you’re going to lose some great talent.

Related articles

• Myers-Briggs personality types. – Psychology and Mental Health … (psychforums.com)
• The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless (blogs.smithsonianmag.com)

Recently, I was invited to a Girls Night Out event by a group of women that I met through an organization with which my son is involved.  These are very nice, smart, friendly women, but I hesitated to say I would attend.  I mentioned the invitation to my husband and he responded with a quick, flat toned, “You should go.  You need more friends.”  What???  I was floored.  I thought about the friendships that I had cultivated over the years:

Reace, my friend since high school that I can rely on for an honest opinion, business advice, and a good cry watching Nicholas Sparks movies.  April, my friend since we were in college and a fellow counselor, who always listens and laughs with me.  Nancy, also a counselor, friend and my business partner, has such an aura of peace and wisdom that being around her is therapeutic.  Leslie, my friend and yet another fellow counselor (hmmmm…I’m sensing a pattern here), with whom I never run out of things to talk about and time always flies by too quickly.  Cyndi, my mom, with whom lunch dates and shopping excursions turn into long talks about family, food, and sometimes (unfortunately) politics.  How lucky am I?  Really…how lucky am I to call these ladies my friends?  I actively communicate with them (not just on Facebook and Twitter), spend time with them, and make plans with them.  They are my FRIENDS!  How can my husband say that I am in need of MORE friends?

Then it hit me.  He has a preference for Extraversion and with that, typically, a natural desire to be with others.  I am reminded of how often he is restless after just a few hours around the house “doing nothing”; while I can be at home for days and never get bored.  So much to do…cooking, reading, gardening, crafts, catching up on my favorite shows.  Yep.  No boredom here.  All. By. Myself.   I am also reminded of how often he makes plans with people, sometimes with random people that he has never before mentioned.  Or an out of the blue lunch with a friend he has not seen since middle school.   After considering all of this, it seems natural that he perceives that I am in need of more friends.  “Of course, you should go!” is an understandably extraverted response to an invitation.   At the same time, as a person with a preference for Introversion, it is typically natural for me to have a close knit group of friends, without the need for more.    Guilt free.  And this is the bottom line.  It is the core of the problem.  Almost immediately, I felt guilty for my lukewarm reaction to the Girls Night Out invitation.  As if it was wrong for me to feel hesitant or disinterested in socializing with people that I did not know very well.

Slowly, I am coming to the realization that these are not wrong feelings, but normal and okay.  Guilt Free.  The more I learn about my natural preferences, the more easily I accept myself.  At the same time, I gain weapons to battle the unwelcome negative thoughts and feelings that sometimes sneak into my brain and heart.    Guilt Free.

By the way, I did go to the Girls Night Out event and I had a great time.  I am glad I chose to go.   A huge part of my journey is to stretch and put myself in positions to grow.   Guilt Free.

But we were lucky. I began home educating my children when we lived in the USA, restarted (after a few years of trying the local schools) in Australia and finished in New Zealand. In all these countries we were legally able to choose this option. Not every country allows that much freedom to its citizens.

Bringing young people together to teach them the knowledge and beliefs of their community, even at primary school age, is something that has existed at least since the classical Greek period, but probably much longer. In ancient Rome it was certainly customary for children to go to school. There are recordings of schools in the Byzantine Empire, with the Aztecs and in ancient China and India. During the last millennium, the Islam began systematically schooling children, in combination with religious teaching, and the Ottoman Empire made education available to even those who did not have the means, by providing free meals and accommodation along with it.

In Western Europe education was often a privilege for the well-off, while many poor children worked on the family farm or, during the industrial revolution, in factories. Aided by the “Age of Reason” and its reliance on science and knowledge, some countries made education compulsory in an effort to reduce illiteracy and raise the general standard of living for ordinary people, and slowly the focus of education shifted from the instruction of mores and values to imparting knowledge and basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. For most children this meant attending the local church (or public) school.

Despite most countries already having laws or provisions for childrens’ education, Article 26 of the 1948 Human Rights Act of the United Nations, made “education” a universal right across all democratic countries.

Article 26

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Now, let’s get picky.

The definition of “education” has changed throughout time, even within the last decades, but education comes from the Latin “educare” and has to do with rearing or upbringing. It has been defined as “to bring out latent capabilities” (Merriam Wester Collegiate Dictionary 1989), but is today generally accepted to deal with teaching factual knowledge, specific skills and the moral values of the community or state.

“Schooling” originated from a word that means a large number of people together (like a school of fish) and its connection with education thus only exists from the teaching or training of many children in one place.

Above I mentioned that the teaching of factual knowledge and basic skills went hand in hand with the teaching of religious or moral values. That is because it is impossible to educate or rear children without passing on your values. For example, if a parent says “you’re not allowed to hit another child”, they have expressed their ethical values. If teachers frown upon a child not sitting still or if they call the child who didn’t do his homework “lazy”, they are imparting social values; expecting patience, obedience, timeliness, responsibility, honesty, loyalty, competition and respect from its citizens means expecting moral values.

Thus, families have values, schools have values and nations have values, but these do not always agree. We are all aware that some nations have a basically Christian philosophy and others are known as “Buddhist countries” and we are all aware that not every family residing in these countries shares those beliefs.

The same with educational institutions. Most schools have some sort of philosophy: There are countless schools that uphold Christian values, each belonging to a different church. Other schools are based on other religious beliefs, like Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. There are alternative method schools, such as democratic “free” schools (Summerhill), Montessori schools and Waldorf schools, and schools that offer general education as a means to being able to train students in specific sports or arts (like ballet schools).

Yet each of these schools (like “public” or state schools) is obliged to follow the guidelines of the nation it is situated in with regard the aspects of general knowledge, basic skills and mores considered valuable by that state. – Today children are taught democratic values from early on: School books begin telling them stories with examples of brave soldiers fighting for “freedom”. “Equality” is emphasized in stories about gender and race differences and “brotherhood” is used to teach children to be team members and to sacrifice for the common good. None of these schools teach children the race-inequality values of the Nazis or Apartheid; none teach the retaliation values of the ancient Greeks, and all of them expect the children to internalize these values, regardless of the values of their home. Thus, family values are overruled by school values and school values are overruled by national values.

Most countries have made education laws based on article 26.1 of the Declaration, making it compulsory for all children between 6 and 16 to attend school, thereby forcing parents to subject their children to the moral values of the state. Yet, nowhere in the Declaration of Human Rights does it say that “education” has to be offered by schools.

Read again point two of this article. It says “Everyone has the right to education….Education shall be free… Elementary education shall be compulsory…”.

The first sentence is intended to stop children being denied an education and to prevent child labour, the second sentence refers to education being available for all children without them having to pay for it, but the third sentence makes it “compusory”, which is a contradiction to the first statement as well as the principles of the declaration itself, since “a right” is not the same as an obligation.

Besides, the Declaration was a moral law and not a legal one, so that it is used to turn into a crime for disobedience to the state that which was originally intended to guarantee people their freedom.

There is a reason that nearly every government interpreted the article this way:  Schools are institutions. It is much easier to influence groups of young minds directly than to rely on individual families to share the beliefs of the state and pass them on. Groups use competition and reward to encourage children to conform and they punish or outcast non-conformists. The aim of schooling children (always and everywhere despite any modern slogans about individuality, freedom and tolerance) is to ensure that they become obedient citizens.

But that is not all. Due to its use of abstract words that can be interpreted in any manner any nation chooses, the article causes confusion.

For example, under 26.1 it speaks about “merit”. But how do you measure merit? Is it grades given by teachers who may like or dislike a child? Do you go purely by the factual data of the hard sciences and mathematics or do you include those topics that include creative writing or art – and which cannot be objectively graded? Or do you consider as deserving merit those students that obediently repeat what they are told without thinking outside the box? So, if I am the ruler of a country that believes in teaching children how to use automatic weapons, I can claim that I educate my children according to the guidelines of the declaration, as I consider that a merit.

And under 26.2, the Declaration states that education shall include the UN values that are intended to promote understanding, tolerance and friendship for all racial and religious groups in the name of peace. Yet if education is about teaching mores and social skills and schools are state (or private) institutions that represent the culture (beliefs and customs) of the society they are in, they cannot simultaneously teach that everybody else’s beliefs are also valid.

Teaching the three Rs is pretty straight forward in the sense that there are certain rules to learning language or arithmetic and therefore they do not rely on the beliefs or customs of a culture, but once you talk more general knowledge this becomes controversial, as exemplified by the rise in arguments and law suits with regard the teaching of Christian beliefs versus teaching Darwinian evolution.

When we consider education as the teaching of the moral values of the state, we are accepting it as having preferences. You cannot teach one set of values as correct and simultaneously say that people who don’t believe that also deserve respect. This is something that happens, not just in schools and universities, but everywhere. People have adopted words like “equality” – which originated to mean equal rights, not “identical” – and “tolerance”, but they cannot put action to their words.

The writers if the declaration, having just come out of the Second World War, clearly promote a set of values intended to maintain peace with regard racial and religious beliefs, but without the realization that one’s personality type influences one’s ethical values, learning styles, manner of responding to the environment, level of conformity, individuality, scalability, as well as the way they interpret the abstract words the declaration is filled with.

My point is that “the human personality” (26.2) does not exist – unless you believe that all people are psychological clones of each other – so that each human being has its own ethical values (regardless of those of this family, school, culture or nation), which means that if those do not conform to those of the state (or school), they are not treated with tolerance, and “parents have the prior right to choose” (26.3) does not apply if the state promotes only one set of moral values, especially there where home education is prohibited or subject to limitations, or where home-education is not an option due to the need for the parent(s) to have a job for financial reasons.

My goal in life and with my writing is to alert people to the discrimination that occurs not based on external factors, such as religion, race or gender, but on the personality traits each person is born with and that cannot be changed.

The idealism of the declaration is in the number of abstract words that have no meaning other than that of the person reading and interpreting them according to his own beliefs, which allows schools to demand that individual children give up their inborn ethic for the morals of the group and nations to demand that families give up their beliefs for those of the state.

As a result, Article 26 of the Human Rights Act fails to respect inborn individual personality differences and thereby the human rights they say “everyone” is entitled to.

It was with a marvellous amount of serendipity that I managed to trip upon a TED talk, this week, that seemed to be addressing the very thoughts that I’ve been struggling to process about my own – somewhat limiting, as I still saw it –  ‘personality type’ within the context of my chosen career path. After all, being an artist is meant to demand of you (demand?) that you be outgoing, extrovert, ever-eager to tout your work to others and to hook into a dynamic community of other creative-types that collectively knows how to hone in upon all the best galleries, art groups, venues, sponsors and more – in other words, the requirement is to ‘get yourself out there’. These, by the way, are all aspects of being an artist that I’ve struggled with, preferring to – well –  spend my time quietly painting. Not surprising really, given that I’m a classic introvert – as I used to imagine to be the case for most painterly types – yet, these days the whole art community seems to be teeming with personalities in possession of far more pizzazz than a typical contestant on the X-Factor and, frankly, if that’s a prerequisite for success as an artist, I’ve ‘had it’ as showmanship just isn’t my style. So, what if you’re an artist on a mission to be much more than a hobbyist yet prefer the solitary, quiet life (a question I’ve been asking myself for some time)? 

The TED video that caught my eye was entitled ‘The Power of Introverts’ and is a presentation given by Susan Cain, a self-confessed introvert and none too typical giver of talks (although she does it very well and has already received in excess of  4 million viewings).  The bestselling book that she has written on this topic goes by the title “Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking” and has now, unsurprisingly, found its way onto my reading list as she has already helped me to identify, and so celebrate, the advantages (yes, there are many) of introversion and how these have been quite pivotal to ‘all that I am’ along the way of my life journey thus far.

I often enjoy dipping into the TED archives but I particularly loved this presentation because it felt like she was talking ‘for’ me, and for the lifetime that I have spent so far as an introvert feeling that introversion was, somehow, something that I should be apologising for. Importantly, and in a way that grabbed my attention from the start, she makes a clear distinction between ‘introversion’ and ‘shyness’, the affliction that I was so often labelled with from as young as just four or five, and with which I so often lumped the (far more applicable, in my case) definition of introversion as though they were both one and the same ‘problem’ that I should strive to be rid of. No, she explains, shyness is “a fear of social judgement” whereas introversion is more about “how do you respond to stimulation…including social stimulation” because extroverts crave more stimulation whereas “introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on, their most capable when they’re in quieter or more low-key environments”. Perhaps testament to how prone I had become (over the forty or so years of living under its label) to regard introversion as an entirely negative trait, I found that I was already warming to this woman’s words like a cat unwinding to a friendly stroke…and so I settled down with my pot of tea to listen to the rest.

I was reminded that introversion is a natural compunction to spend time alone, to connect with source your own way…in a private place where you can trust you won’t be unwittingly knocked off track by the ideas, the energy, the manifesto of others. The impact of others being in our space can come directly, in the form of ‘stronger’ extrovert personalities taking over a group activity with their sheer energy, enthusiasm and (often) compulsion to compete with those around them, or it can come indirectly as a result of the fact that – as beings who are far more interconnected than most of us realise – we tend to absorb, be influenced by and, ultimately, mirror the mindset and attitudes of others around us just by being in proximity to them (this brings to mind an excellent book I read last year entitled ‘The Bond: Connecting Through The Space Between Us”, written by Lynne McTaggart, which deals with this phenomenon in some detail). Whichever way it happens, introverts can find this all so much radio-interference in terms of their ability to ‘tune in’ to their own thought processes and personal connection to the very source of their creativity.

This intersects seamlessly with where I’ve arrived in my own personal-development journey, as I’ve come to realise (in tandem with my experience of connecting with source through meditation) that an ability to interpret or express what comes from – or, rather, through –  me, as an individual, a soul if you like, relies on a connection being made with source in such a way that I become a sort of conduit for inspiration, a device that delivers content. This is something that I do –  assuming there are no distractions of the kind that result in losing my thread – by interpreting that inspiration through the medium of paint, words or whatever seems most fitting to the task. By its very nature, this method of creating is not one that is easily adapted to a team-situation and whilst there is a functionality to team-work (a spirit of ‘let’s put our heads together, pool ideas and get this thing done’) that can be useful and even necessary in certain circumstances where collaboration and group consensus are called for, this is not the same as this drawing-down of something that relies on the purity of its deliverance to the world to ensure the potency of its impact.

For all that it is out-of-vogue as a concept of where inspiration comes from, I know what I have described here would resonate with a great many artists, writers, composers, scientists, mathematicians even, since it is very much the classic viewpoint of how inspiration occurs. Perhaps this is also a viewpoint of inspiration that has become less popular as people, en masse, have thrown out the supposed ‘religious’ connotations behind such a process…and yet, in an age of much broader acceptance of the fact that we live in a vibrational universe and that there are considerably more forces at work than are apparent at the physical level through the means of our five senses, surely we are ready to embrace the fact that bashing around cognitive ideas in groups is not the pinnacle of where great creativity comes from.  Is it not more acceptable to those who cringe at the merest suggestion that inspiration is delivered to us from an external ‘being’ that, perhaps, it is the universe of which we are a member, a fragment – and importantly, an expression – that is communicating to us in the vibrational language that we are all capable of ‘hearing’ and interpreting and yet which we tend to drown out with all the noise and chitter-chatter of the external world?

Moreover, its not called in-spiration for nothing; this act calls upon the individual to go inside of themselves, not to seek the kind of outside validation and ‘bouncing of ideas off each other’ (resulting in a sort of hybrid product made up of the best, or most assertive aspects, of the totality) that group discussion – group creation – is all about. We have now entered into an age where oneness and unity are the buzz-phrases of an enlightening world and yet this is not in contradiction, but rather in affirmation, of the need to freshly embrace the sovereign ‘self’ within that oneness since it can only be through each of us fully realising and expressing our distinct flavour of self that we can achieve the kind of oneness of which we are capable as a whole!

In my case, inspiration comes in on waves when I disengage my analytical left-brain as far as possible and reach a state of void (which also feels, somewhat ironically, like a state of total connection with everything that there is, yet in its pure state, not the ‘all’ of the outside world which can seem so muddled by variance of human interpretation) and this cannot be done, for me, when in direct communion with, or even in the same space as, others. For heaven’s sake, I even struggle when there’s someone else in the house with me, albeit in a different room and regardless of how quiet they are being, and I could never share studio space as art is not a social activity in my book. During the school holidays, and as much as I love parenthood, I go into a pining state for the few daily hours of being all alone that I’m accustomed to and crave in order to keep balanced and sane. Just as large public spaces – shopping malls, cinemas, bars – can at times feel overwhelming to me, like a bombardment of converging human energy and  intentions, a sort of screaming white noise of divergent vibrations, I find that sharing a space with others when I create can cause tremendous interference ‘on the line’ as I download the very inspiration that I work with. Yet when it happens – which is only when all distraction is stilled – it is much like the point in meditation when the mind is finally quieted, that moment when you realise flow has been established because it comes as something akin to a steady stream of (how to describe it?) energy…vibration…radiance…channelling easiest inspiration direct to pen or brush.

As I listened to Susan’s description of the summer camp where she was made to call out the daily mantra “r-o-w-d-i-e, that’s the way we spell rowdy, rowdy, rowdy…” along with her nine year-old peers, then the continuing onslaught upon her introversion as she grew into a young adult, along with the impact this had on her adult life and career choice, I found myself mentally scanning the similar pattern of my own life. Like Susan, I had basked in the halcyon days of an early childhood typified by solo-pursuits that included a great deal of reading, creating and being ‘lost’ in the world of my own imagination – my happiest times being, by far, those that were spent with a book in my hands. As I heard her say how repeatedly she then “got the message…that my quiet and introverted way of being was not necessarily the way to go and that I should be trying to be more of an extrovert”, I found myself nodding sagely from my own experiences right up to, and including, some of my most recent interactions with the ‘outside world’. Failed and uncomfortable attempts to be bold and assertive have littered my own life story for as many years as I can remember, when a quieter way would have been more akin to what my soul was calling for me to select…yet I was all-too-thoroughly consumed by the supposed imperative to ‘fit in’ with what seemed like a world full of successful extroverts. She refers to years of self-negating choices that she hardly even noticed she was making as they cropped-up along the way and, again, this sounded oh-so familiar. I recalled how willingly I’d surrendered the contentedly self-contained pursuits of my early years in favour of ‘fitting in’ with my outgoing teenage friends. Then the ‘failure’ that I deemed myself to be at university because I remained tongue-tied, panic-stricken and ‘stupid looking’ in group seminars for three long years, in spite of receiving accolades for my written work and exam performance. Next came the horror of my alcohol-fuelled twenties that were meant to assimilate me with all the other rowdy socialites from amidst whom I hoped to draw the loyal friends and life-partner that I longed for, never realising that, by and large, I was looking in all the wrong places and passing myself off as someone that I wasn’t, mimicking bravado that wasn’t mine.

It’s been some time now since the epiphany hit me that the almost total denial of the ‘self’ that longed to be left to its own gentler ways, to read quietly, connect with nature and to spend a great deal of time alone amounted to a negation, disconnection and total abandonment of the very ‘me’ that was able to draw inspiration from anywhere….and for all those many years, I was quite literally lost, uninspired and steadily becoming more and more ‘unwell’, blighted with all the physical markers of a soul that had lost its way. At the peak of my ‘unwellness’, I was struggling to exist in a corporate environment – those monstrous entities within which excellence at ‘teamwork’ and group-functioning has been made the be-all-and-end-all – and so hardly any wonder that (akin with countless other introverted souls that I witnessed steadily wilting at their desks) I was anything but thriving!

Yet it was this health-crisis (which turned out to be the very best thing that could have happened to me, a solution flung from the heart of the problem, as is so often the way…) that released me back into all the unspeakable joy of the solitary pursuits that I had missed since childhood and which were suddenly HERE again and available for me to pursue to my heart’s content within the safe circle and ‘animal warmth’ (quote Susan Cain) of my family.  The clouds began to clear. I felt like a device that had been returned back to its base unit so that it could recharge and start functioning again. Almost overnight, I pulled back from everything in the outside world and this had the glorious effect of  throwing me right back into connection with EVERYTHING, allowing inspiration to flow and all things to become possible. A limitless quality entered my reality that has never since left me and whereas the game of life set amidst a sea of competing extroverts seemed so very daunting, my new world in which I was the centre of my own universe and fully connected to it in a way that was direct and without need for group discussion, majority vote or any pretence at charisma seemed utterly boundless. And as I’ve heard so many others who have experienced something similar to this confirm, this ‘coming back’ to where you are meant to be, realigning with your soul’s purpose, ironing out the ‘kink in your pipe’ of the direction of your life is like opening the floodgates to more flow than you’ve every encountered before…its as though this flow is suddenly re-established with such a vengeance that it veritably gushes like a burst geyser! Since drawing ‘back’ (though the word sounds all wrong since, for me, it was all ‘forwards’) into my naturally introverted state, its as though inspiration has been stepped up to a whole new level and I have every confidence it will never stop flowing,  now that I’ve come to realise the importance of safeguarding and perpetuating the precious time that I spend alone. Yet when will we start sending out the message that this is an option, an acceptable way of being, for some a preference, to our kids who are, right now, being taught that to go off alone to do anything is, frankly, anti-social and weird.

As you can tell, I’d already been playing with the ‘ins and outs’ of introversion, long before tripping upon Susan Cain and her extremely motivational TED talk. Given I’d already reached a plateau of profound appreciation for the very quality that underpins all that I am, as an individual and as an artist, a writer, a perceiver of details and maker of connections, someone who needs their own space to be all of that, I welcomed with an internal cheer this woman’s ‘three calls for action’ as we stand poised on the brink of a dramatic attitude-change where it comes to introversion and the part it plays in our world. That’s because her first request is that we drop, once and for all, the cultural obsession and endless call for “constant group work” that permeates our schools, offices and society as a whole. Such team effort might appear, at one level, to be the very epitome of dynamic creativity, as individuals clamouring for attention mimic the kind of fizz and buzz that we’ve come to expect as an indicator of something new bursting into life, the kind of sparks charging the air that imply ‘something positive is happening in here’ (be that in a classroom, boardroom or wherever) and yes, there is some truth in that, working with others can be catalytic – and yet the truly dynamic creative process can also be a much quieter and far more internal thing, a sort of quantum-level occurrence that is more light than fizz.

When creation takes place in a group sat round a large table – one of the classroom “pods of desks” that Susan Cain reminds us has become the norm in our schools – an inherent pitfall is that this group format may unwittingly extinguish some of the very brightest sparks in the room (from experience, I can’t tell you how many school lessons I sat through in a mute and fear-gripped state that left me physically incapable of sharing my ideas with the ‘group’). The extreme discomfiture experienced at being cornered into a group situation that is so atypical of how an introvert knows how to function can act to sever such individuals from the very source of inspiration that has the potential to unleash genius forces from within them – and, from my own experience, everything shuts down and all potential heads for the door and way over the far distant hills in such a scenario!

This reluctant tug towards increased extraversion, a feeling of “I must try harder, get myself ‘out there’, force myself to be seen more”, can be a lifelong cloud of doom overhanging the introvert – and shouldn’t have to be there at all. As I watched this talk to its conclusion, I acknowledged with a tangible body-sigh that I could finally let myself off the hook for being, most likely, the least participatory person in the various art groups of which I am an all-but-invisible member, something for which I have been berating myself for the longest time because – I’m sorry (yet why am I apologising?) – the merest suggestion of collaboration in a creative sense, of group discussion in an ideas-bashing-kind-of way or of working together on a shared theme makes my usually buoyant creativity drop through the floor of my stomach, I just can’t help it – it’s the way I’m made –  and maybe the time has come to accept that and no apologies required. I see my immensely creative daughter struggle with the same (self-perceived) trip-wire and have long-since switched to presenting her introverted tendencies as a huge positive to her (rather than maintaining a common parental-protective impulse to train them out of her, ‘for her own good’). Importantly, I finally ‘get’ that I can let myself off the hook and celebrate my own introverted tendencies for being the very crux of all that I am.

The TED talk mentions degrees of introversion, just as there are shades of everything, and I would add that many of us introverts tend to measure how much we are managing to interact with others by the same standards that are used by extroverts and so we are only taking into account whether we feel comfortable public-speaking, being on committees or ever turn up to those work, school or social gatherings that everyone else seems to relish.  What I say to you all now is, make sure you are looking at the whole picture of your life, those ‘smaller’ interactions with neighbours, those people at the checkout counter, that woman who needed the door held open to let her wheelchair through, the family members that benefitted from your advice or encouragement, the email you passed around to raise money for charity…all those things that count as interaction and make a real difference (and probably more than you’ll ever know). For my own part, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m interacting with people right now…and I interact with others every time a new painting is put out into the world, with every blog-post I write, through the social media that I use every day or when I make a difference to my family, my friends or even strangers that I meet in the park when walking my dog. Strangely (or perhaps not so) the more in touch I become with the singularity that is me, the more I seem to resonate with the  people that I do encounter so that I find that really amazing and vibrant conversations are suddenly sparked off with people I meet, as happened just this afternoon whilst I was out buying dog food, or that the kind of smiles that make a difference are exchanged with strangers, that my osteopath gives me a spontaneous hug for brightening her day or that I connect with more and more wonderful people through social media than I ever thought would be possible, some of whom have quite literally altered my life. The thing is, we all do these things…its just that we have the achievement benchmark set for the extroverted personality type that only accounts for just over half the population – whereas introverts make up the other considerable portion of all the beings on this planet and tend to operate in ways that are as effective as they are subtle!

There’s also an important life-lesson to be learned from the introvert’s modus operandi for even the extroverts in our midst, and one which they will all reach sooner or later if a life in alignment with soul is what they truly crave. That life-lesson is that there comes a time when we all need to pull back from all the hubbub and combined noise emanating from the crowds of advice sharers and idea-mongers out there and to just listen to our inner guidance system because, like a single steady note cutting through the boom, it’s the purest ‘noise’ any of us will ever hear and the deliverance of ourselves into the physical world via that guidance is, necessarily, the truest interpretation of ‘self’ that we can ever hope to achieve in a particular lifetime, the one that requires no external validation and which causes the kind of smile to play around our lips that no thing, no one and no external circumstance could ever cause to fade. This is the ‘real McCoy’ and introverts, very often, know what it looks like and feels like because they spend more time, from much earlier portions of their lives, with all their senses tuned in to something other than the bells and whistles of pack approval that dominate the outside world.  What introverts are highly attuned at picking up on is that knowing, at some level, that you are on the road to achieving what you really came here to do and achieving soul-mission is an intensely personal thing, something that no teamwork or group pow-wow can really bring you closer to.

For me, it’s time to accept once and for all, and without self-criticism, that to make a real contribution – albeit my own particular brand of contribution (on the premise that to bring about what we long to see in this world, our most constructive act is to concentrate on embodying that thing, becoming its expression, from within ourselves) – I need to spend copious amounts of time alone, and that’s fine! I’m not quite what you would call a recluse; I love to socialise with friends, to laugh and join in as much as the next introvert(!) but the desire to step outwards is in a constant state of see-saw with the opposite urge to draw inwards and I accept that about myself at last. Instinctively, I know – have always known – when it’s time to step ‘out there’ or to withdraw and I intend to listen to those rhythms without apology from this point forwards. I would hazard a guess that I’m far from the first – amongst a long list of artists, writers, composers, scientists, mathematicians, Nobel-prize-winners… to reach this conclusion and run with it; sadly, it feels like yet another of those all-pervasive modern-day fads that the prefer-to-work-alone introvert is made to feel that they are in need of corrective training, socialisation or therapy!

In conclusion, introverts are not faulty extroverts – something I realise I’ve been thinking for most of my life. As Susan Cain points out, that two-part process of going off alone to gain inspiration, clarity or a download of some kind and then delivering that insight to the wider public using whatever medium serves best – be it words, paint or mathematical formulae –  is the very same one used by some of the real change-makers of our times, from Jesus, to Gandhi to Einstein. None of these individuals was what you could call a typical ‘group-participating extrovert’ – in fact, the signs are that they all preferred and even revered their solitary existence, surrendering it only when they felt utterly compelled to in the interests of the greater good. The time is ripe to stop marginalising but, rather, to put value on the introverted way of being when it occurs because – as a group, as the whole – we really need “what introverts do best” and the kind of inspiration that such individuals are equipped to share in their rather quiet and unassuming way.

Related:

• TED talk Susan Cain “The Power of Introverts”.
• “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Cant Stop Talking” Susan Cain.
• Susan Cain - Author’s Website.
• Secrets of a Super Successful Introvert: How to (Quietly) Get Your Way
• The Introvert List (lettersfromyonder.com)
• Introverts and Extroverts: Different Approaches to Life (lmeccleston.wordpress.com)
• Misunderstood Introverts (thecognitivelife.com)
• 7 Success Tips for Introverts (psychologytoday.com)

It’s time for another INTJ-based post, since that’s primarily what brings visitors to the blog in the first place… and also what makes up 98% of the search terms. (Honestly, I don’t know whether to be insulted or amused with some of your search terms. No, I won’t marry you, yes, it’s hard being an INTJ at times, and it is possible for us to be pleasant, clearly you just haven’t earned it yet.)

Recently, I read something about how the results of one popular online personality type identifier are skewed to favor INTJ so it’s wise to take multiple tests and be brutally honest in your responses to the questions. I’d have to agree with that, since many people don’t have a sincere view of themselves until they know themselves very well, and have seen their own responses in a variety of situations. Often the questions beg extreme responses, which can skew your test results in certain directions since no one wants to be typed as an extreme introvert or a what they consider to be an airhead. There’s an abnormally large amount of people out there typed as an INTJ who, well, don’t really act like it. And why wouldn’t they want to be an INTJ? House and Sherlock have made being a socially-awkward, elitist jackass cool. (Much thanks.)

Anyway, Poser Wannabe Discussions aside, here’s a few things to keep in mind when dealing with your typical INTJ.

Our tolerance level for bull**** is nil.

Since our thought process is analytical, anything illogical doesn’t add up. This means we can spot that you’re lying, deluding yourself, or hiding the real reason you’re feeding us a line a mile off, and it irritates us that you think we’re dumb enough to fall for it. Also, if you actually believe your own excuses, you land in our “doesn’t live in reality” category. This isn’t a place you want to be, since we have zero respect for those people. Just being honest with us (or with yourself) wins you a lot of points in our estimtiation, even if we don’t agree with your preference / conclusion / decision / motivation.

Usually, we see other people (including you) for who they/you truly are.

More emotional types see people they love through a veil of affection that makes them truly oblivious to the faults of those people. That’s where the term “love is blind” originates. Certain types either really do believe that this or that person is above reproach, talented, beautiful, sexy, or what have you, or they choose to pretend not to see the truth. We don’t. We are fully aware of the imperfections of the people around us. If we know for a fact that they’re not as beautiful, talented, smart, or wonderful as you make them out to be, and we don’t spell out their many faults for your benefit, consider yourself loved to the extreme, because that’s how we show our love for you: we don’t destroy your illusions with the truth.

Your untruths have repercussions with us.

If you’ve shown us in the past that we have reason to doubt your word (as in, you’ve lied about something and we find out the truth), in the future we’ll carry that forward in all our dealings with you. Lie to us once, and be doubted in every statement you make from that moment on, since we’ve now put you into the “prove it or I don’t believe it” category. Our natural instinct is to analyze people, and if something doesn’t add up with your stories (or if no one else corroborates them), our instinct is to doubt your word, particularly if you try and elicit our sympathy more often than we feel your situation requires.

We aren’t interested in anything that doesn’t… well, interest us.

Please, try not to bore us with things you’re interested in but know for a fact we aren’t. You will become background noise in our plans for world domination. Our eyes will glaze over, and we’ll either ignore you or try and change the subject. We may like you, and being around you, but it’s impossible for us to fake fascination in something we’re not interested in. Being fake isn’t who we are; in fact, we hate it. So please, do us a favor. For those things we don’t have in common, or that we’ve tried and shown no interest in, find someone else to share it with.

Don’t expect us to delight in substandard anything.

Our personal standards are high and it offends us if others don’t live up to their full potential. This includes artistic anything (literature, film, music). If an offering is “the best that person can do,” we’re less harsh on it than if we know that person is capable of much better things. If we do make an exception for something totally substandard, don’t try to convince us whatever it is we’re making allowances for doesn’t suck – it does, we know it, we admit to it, and we like it anyway. If we choose to embrace something, it is in full awareness of its virtues and faults. We don’t think anything is wonderful that actually isn’t, and are irritated with those who do think something poorly done is actually quality entertainment.

This is the true meaning of our “mastermind” status.

Our type is called “the mastermind” because in a very literal sense, our mind is our master. We take everything, internalize it, analyze it, rationalize it, and either accept or reject it based on the evidence, plausibility, past experiences, and logic involved. Because we’re so “mental” we value anything or anyone that encourages us to think. We’re never more delighted than when approached with a new concept or idea we’ve not considered before, and are frustrated with others’ inability to want to discuss things in-depth. Having fun at that movie may be good enough for you, but we walk to talk about the religious / political / social undercurrent, and discuss how well or how poorly the plot / characters were conceived.

Our passions and emotions run deep.

Though you may not see them on the surface, don’t doubt that they exist. We may even love deeper and more passionately than other types, because there’s never a moment of “blind love” with us: when we love, we do so in complete awareness of all potential outcomes and flaws. We don’t “fall in or out of love” easily (which means we are loyal in a relationship) because we don’t attach ourselves easily. There are areas in our lives in which we really don’t have any emotional responses, but we do deeply desire the respect and approval of the people we admire, respect, and love. Not being able to obtain that can seriously hurt us, sometimes to the point of our emotional withdrawal. Our greatest source of frustration is being misunderstood. It’s simply easier not to communicate most of the time than try and share ourselves with you and run the risk of being misinterpreted.

We avoid emotional situations if we can help it.

When our emotions do get out of control, we don’t know how to handle it. It frustrates or even angers us that we can’t “shut it off,” and we’re embarrassed if you witness our emotional turmoil, mood swings, or bouts of depression. This is why we hate funerals (we loathe the thought of crying in public), don’t like watching sad movies more than once (we hate emotional manipulation and feel “used” by things that shamelessly tap into our emotions), and avoid conflict if possible (if you’re upset, we don’t know what to do to comfort you, since being physical and/or empathetic doesn’t come naturally to us).

Sometimes, we do shut our emotions off.

If someone or something manipulates or abuses our emotions to the point where we get angry about it, we can emotionally distance ourselves until we become “untouchable.” This usually accompanies growing feelings of contempt toward whatever has proven unworthy of our emotional investment or respect. This is how we can walk away from a relationship without emotional distress (thus, our reputation for being “cold”) or can cease caring altogether about something, leave it behind, and never have either any interest in it again.

Remember, we’re all diverse.

Don’t assume that INTJs aren’t diverse or deeply compassionate. We’re also not rational all the time—that’s simply our “method of operation.” We can be emotional. We can be conflicted. We can be “blind” in our affections (up to a point). We can even be irrational, because INTJ is just a “type.” It’s a method of measuring our reactive behaviors and thought process – it doesn’t make us who we are, it’s simply a part of what we are, and is often reinforced or even stinted by our more dominant outside influences – such as religion, upbringing, or education. No one fits inside a box, and no one is totally defined by their “type.” It’s just an easy-access way of better self-understanding (or in this case, allowing others to better understand you).

Finally, here are a few responses to recent search terms and questions.

Is the Phantom of the Opera an INTJ?

No, he isn’t. Erik makes emotional decisions, rather than logical ones.

How do INTJs speak?

Contrary to the legacy of Spock, we don’t sound like a dictionary, although we do tend to use proper grammar! (And we’re likely to correct yours.)

How can I love an INTJ?

What do you mean? How can you learn to love one, or how can you show love to them? In the former’s case, focus on their positive traits and find joy in them, rather than frustration. (Love their honesty, their loyalty, and their intelligence.) You can show love to them by affirming them in ways they’ll appreciate most (being honest in supporting them, not taking their bouts of unintentional rudeness personally, and paying attention to them and their interests). The truly balanced INTJ will try and do the same for you.

Would an INTJ go back to a past relationship?

Yes, but only if the factors in that relationship have changed. If neither of you has changed, they know the outcome of the relationship won’t change, so there would be no point in revisiting it.

Does an INTJ ever do nice things?

Yes, all the time. Them not telling you their true opinion on everything is a nice thing!

What do people think of INTJs?

You tell me. Do you find us fascinating and fun to be around, or are you annoyed with us or just plain terrified? Do tell!

How does faith and an INTJ work?

It works if they find rational arguments for faith. For many, it’s easier to believe God exists than to try and logically explain the many gaps in alternative theories.

How can I get back an INTJ?

That depends on how you lost them. Were you inconsistent or untrustworthy? Did you expect them to be different than they were? To win one back, you have to prove you’re trustworthy… and believe me, there’s a trial period that can be anywhere from a few weeks to ten years in which you have to prove yourself worthy.

Does an INTJ need a “life purpose”?

Yes. Otherwise, they’ll despair.

Do INTJs cry?

I don’t know if male INTJs do much, but I certainly do!

What does an INTJ mean when he says I love you?

It means he loves you. INTJs don’t do bull****, remember?

Why are INTJs so cool?

You don’t understand us and our deep, dark, intellectual ways; that makes us fascinating.

If INTJs are so cold, what do they get out of relationships?

Much as we enjoy living in our own heads, we like stimulating conversation more.

Are there any INTJs in Twilight?

This, I’m not sure about, but I think considering both his behavior in the books and his past actions in dealing with his extended family, Aro, the Leader of the Volturi, is one.

Is Benjamin Martin in The Patriot an INTJ?

No, since his decisions are mostly emotional. I don’t know that Tavington is one, either — he was stupid to attack Martin’s family.

Is Viktor in Underworld an INTJ?

Yes, absolutely, but he may have a heavy dose of “ISTJ” as well (in his inability to adjust to non-traditional behaviors, such as the blending of the species).

Is Walter/Walternate Bishop an INTJ in Fringe?

Honestly, I don’t know! I’m tempted to say yes, though.

Hmm…if I say extraverted does that make me appear arrogant? But if I say introverted, will I seem timid? What if I’m both? Wait. I think I am both. Is that possible? There’s no way.

Needless to say, my definitions of introverted and extraverted needed some help, and as we delved into a long discussion regarding personality types, my roommate and I came to the conclusion that a person could be both introverted and extraverted. Well duh, Carl Jung already told us this a century ago. Jung’s theories must have been put on the back burner, overshadowed by Freud’s psychosexual theories in my introductory psychology course.

Which brings me to my newest interest, the science of personality.

Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, proposed and developed the concepts of extraverted and introverted personality, archetypes, and the collective unconscious in the early 1900s. Jung defined introversion as being focused on one’s inner psychic activity and extraversion being focused on external factors in the outside world. His theories inspired the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which measures psychological preferences in how people interpret the world, which thus influences decision-making tendencies. The MBTI is intended to translate personality type theory into practical application, such as in the workplace. It is thought that workplace efficiency can be increased when an employee’s personality type is considered and catered to accordingly.

According to Jung and Myers-Briggs, the four principle psychological functions by which we experience the world are sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking; sensing and intuition are perceiving functions, and thinking and feeling are judging functions. Further, each of the functions can be expressed in an either introverted or extraverted form. The MBTI sorts these psychological functions as pairs, resulting in 16 possible personality types. For example:

ENTJ: entraversion (E), intuition (N), thinking (T), judgment (J)

Extroversion vs. Introversion indicates whether one directs attention and gets energy from the external world of people or the internal world of concepts and ideas. Introverts are powered by the inner worlds and can be social but thrive on alone time; they want to think more than talk and may create interconnected frameworks of abstract information. Extroverts find energy in people and socializing; they tend to think on their feet and thrive off interpersonal interaction.

Sensing vs. intuition indicates whether one perceives the world by observing reality or using their imagination. Sensing people rely on their five senses; they want facts. Intuitive people just have that “spidey-sense” about something that tells them it is right; they are innovative.

Thinking vs. feeling indicates a person’s preference in decision making. Thinkers take analysis, logic, and principle into consideration; they value fairness in making decisions. Feelers value empathy and harmony and focus on human values.

Judging vs. Perceiving tells us whether a person views the world as a structured or spontaneous environment. Judgers are decisive self-starters; they take action quickly and follow their plan of action. Perceivers are curious, adaptable and spontaneous; they may start many things that they never finish and like to leave their options open.

Obviously, the science of a personality is multi-faceted, plastic, and highly variable. It would be impossible to cover the topic in a textbook, let alone a blog post. Though I’m not entirely convinced that each person falls into a specific personality, I do agree that people fluctuate in their behavior all the time, and even extreme “introverts” and “extraverts” do not always act according to their type.

According to my personality test results, I’m an ENTJ. Apparently I’m a leader that values knowledge and competence, and usually has little patience with inefficiency or disorganization. This may be true, however, right now I am writing this blog instead of studying for my last final, which means–brace yourself–I’ve stepped outside of my personality type. But in this age of technology, innovation, and distraction, I really think I have to be a little of both to succeed, and that is exactly what I will strive to be.

So I was delighted when a little while ago, as part of a staff training programme, I was offered the opportunity to do a Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessment to find out my ‘type’.

In order to get our result we had to complete a long questionnaire that consisted of some very cryptic either/or options (do you like going out, or hate staying in?!) that was then posted off to be analysed. We came together as a group with a fantastic facilitator and coach called Lynne Howells to find out the results in a group workshop.

It was fascinating to discover very quickly that there were two types to start with – those who liked being put in a box, and those who didn’t! Some really struggled with the idea of a label that defined them, whereas others really felt that it was a fit with them. I  personally think that it can be a little like horoscopes – you agree with the bits you like and want to ignore the rest.

As it turns out, from the 16 potential types I am an ‘INTJ’ – known as ‘The Strategist’. Which makes me just a little smug, I have to say, as I do like that title. Maybe I’ll put it on a business card one day. Apparently this makes me knowledgable and adaptable, and talented in bringing ideas from conception to reality, all of which I’d like to agree with of course.

I’ve since been obsessively trying to mentally calculate my friends and colleagues ‘type’ to see if it gives my any further insight into how we communicate, and it has been useful and a bit of an eye-opener. As an introvert, I’d prefer to sit and mull over an idea before I give you my response – whereas a typical extrovert will want to talk it through, mentally processsng as they go. You can see from this one example what an impact that might have in the workplace, and easily spot the extroverts – they are the ones that stop by your desk to talk through an issue, unlike the introverts who will send you an email with their fully formed thoughts carefully typed out.

MBTI assessors are accredited and I’d love to be able to do this myself one day. You can find out how to get accredited here.

I, Brandon Haskey, am an uptight, anxious, type-A personality.

I know- when I figured it out I was just as shocked as I’m sure you are right now. Oh, you’re not shocked? You knew I was an uptight asshole about stuff all along? Why didn’t anybody tell me?!

Last night I was talking with Kyle about my approach toward life (among other things). For a few months I had been seriously thinking about the fact that, when things do not go in the way I intend for them to go, I feel genuine anxiety. I thought I might have OCD. People kind of joke about OCD all the time, but I felt some honest fear about it because it was happening more often- the anxiety was creeping closer and closer to breaking through top of my sealed glass Coke bottle brain. I felt like smaller and smaller incidents were starting to arouse this anxiety- finding water on the floor in the bathroom, a borderline obsession with my car’s gas mileage (I spend an absurd amount of my commute staring at the indicator for how many miles are left on my gas tank), individual conversations and exchanges not eliciting the results I wanted. I was standing on the edge of something I worried was very, very deep and scary. Not to be confused with living on the edge of a broken heart. 

I came home yesterday from an exhausting day at school and a conversation with a loved one that had not gone as expected. I had to admit to myself that, sometimes when I talk to people, I will try to lead them to a place where I want them to go because, damnit, that’s where I want them to go. And it causes me tremendous anxiety when I think a person should be in a certain place, or should say a certain thing, and they don’t or can’t. Why can’t you just do this thing I need you to do?! I would tell myself. Honestly, it was (and is) tiring to deal with. 

I’ve got to learn to let go of things I can’t control.

This anxiety thing has been consuming me. It’s why I check craigslist every single day, usually more than once, for apartments in Chicago even though I can’t even begin to think about where I’ll live until summer. It’s why I get so frustrated with people when they don’t do what I think they should do, whether it be tell me something I want to know, not turn in an assignment, or pressure me to do something I don’t want to do. It’s why I like and am good at grammar. It terrifies me to think I could lose control.

So this song is brilliant for its lyrical content at first, but then the ending of the song that pushes into this incredible crescendo does me in. I love the artistic take on the theme- not only is our singer losing control in her life, but the band is literally losing control of the song as it moves forward. Awesome. I digress.

Letting go of control in my life, when I’ve done it, has been beautifully beneficial. When I let go of controlling who I thought I should love, a bevy of opportunities opened for me. When I let go of who I thought should know about my sexuality, a world of happy acceptance opened for me. That hasn’t made it any easier to deal with the anxiety, but I can reflect on that now and understand.

But, here’s the rub: up until last night I did not realize any of the above was true about myself. I had always viewed myself as a type B personality.

If you aren’t familiar with the generalization of personality types into A and B categories, here’s a brief run down:

Type A personalities are considered rigid, uptight, organized, sensitive, helpful, obsessive types. The kind of person who takes on more than they should. The kind of person who doesn’t have time for dawdling and just wants you to get to the freaking point.

Type B personalities are all loosey goosey. They don’t mind not achieving things because they aren’t defined by that. They’re right brained types who don’t care about organization or time management.

I have hilariously spent my life thinking I was a Type B personality. I’m not uptight, man. I play it coooool.

Except I don’t play most things cool. I freak right the hell out about stuff with alarming frequency. I care very much about being on time, and I organize the time in my brain very, very clearly. I know exactly how I want certain aspects of my life to go, whether it be teaching, my interactions with friends, loved ones, whatever, and when they don’t go that way I feel such… intensity in my brain. 

One of my pet peeves is being late. I cannot handle being late for important things. What’s interesting, though, is that sometimes when I’m meeting friends somewhere I will be intentionally a little late because I so hate the idea of being someplace alone. Then if I’m a little late, it’s guaranteed that someone will be there, and I won’t feel that intense pressure of being some place alone with thoughts like ‘What if they never show up‘ or ‘What if they are trying to ditch me‘ running through my head. As much.

I’m 28, nearly 29, years old, and those kinds of teenage thoughts still go through my head. 

What if I like him more than he likes me? 

What if I shouldn’t have asked about _______?

What if they just stop calling me?

It’s not like I won’t have those thoughts anymore. The realization, though, that I have these issues with control because, among some other reasons of course, I have this Type A personality that just wants things to be done the way that I think they should be, gives me some freedom. I can recognize when I’m starting to feel the anxiety because I know it’s going to happen, and I can try to steer clear from it a little more.

Talk about loosey goosey!

So Kyle and I discovered this in a late night talk after I got home from work, and he kept referring to his/my Type A-ness. Say it out loud. After you’ve realized what it sounds like, you’ll understand why I’m making the title of my book Type Anus now. Or is Type A-ness classier? Who cares. Just giggle at the word ‘anus’ please.

While deciding what outfit looks best or determining your children’s future may not be something that Myrtle Beach Chrysler can help you with, picking the right Chrysler or Jeep model is something that we can definitely help with! How? By fitting the perfect vehicle to your unique personality. Each week we will highlight a Chrysler Jeep vehicle that matches your individually awesome personality.