INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night.” —Glade Adams

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” —Oscar Wilde

“The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” —Benjamin E. Mays

“The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world.” —Roger Williams

“Apparently, there are many people who have nothing they are passionate about in life, so that is what this thread is going to be about. The last thread kinda started that way but veered off more into how to live your passion once you know it. I didn’t realize until the end that lots of people don’t even have a passion.”

Continue reading “Passion, the Passionless, and Fear”

“I met an Olympic athlete last night. An Olympic athlete with a secret. Out of respect for the innocent his identity will remain a mystery, but his quandary is felt out in the open, all around the world. Here he was, this athlete, a handsome chap, young and virile, built like a mo-fo, 80 feet tall, dear as can be and, while he’s quite adept at achieving great feats of physical activity, all he wants to do is—write poetry.”

Continue reading “My Duty”

“One young man I worked with had a desire to be a medical doctor. Fine. So I looked at his assessment. He was everything a doctor wasn’t—he liked the outdoors, he liked intensely physical activities, he liked competitive environments, he didn’t like to interact on a personal level (okay, that trait tends to go with surgeons, but whatever), he liked being part of a team, he liked knowing who was boss, he hated classroom learning.

“Um, what part of being a doctor would he like? The money. He wants to make lots and lots of money. In his world, doctors were the American Idol, the ideal, the sure thing. ‘You want to be a doctor even if you end up hating your life?’ I asked him. But doctors are rich. When I mentioned that doctors don’t become the richest people (and I know this because I am one and my husband is one and my neighborhood is full of ‘em and we are all upper middle-class at best), he seemed shocked.

“In this young man’s case, he listened to reason and together we worked out a plan to get him into a profession that suited him—most likely it will include his love for scuba diving, his desire to be part of a team to work on something challenging. He will probably end up making a gazillion dollars in the oil industry working in the deep sea. He was shocked that he could use his talents, combine them with his loves, and actually make money.”

Continue reading “American Idol: Idealizing Riches and Fame, Ignoring a Great Life”

INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving):

Focused on making the world a better place, the INFP personality is both idealist and perfectionist. INFPs possess strong value systems, are future-oriented, creative, and highly religious or philosophical individuals. Driven to meet the needs of others, INFPs tend to choose creative or human service oriented careers that allow them to use their instinctive sense of empathy and remarkable communication skills. INFPs represent 1% of the population. The following list represents some careers that may appeal to INFPs. Source

Actor
Architect
Artist
Bilingual education teacher
Biological scientist
Career counselor
Child life specialist
Child welfare counselor
Clinical psychologist
Coach
College professor (humanities, arts)
Composer
Consultant—team building/conflict resolution
Corporate team trainer
Counselor
Curator
Customer relations manager
Desktop publisher
Dietitian/nutritionist
Diversity manager—human resources
Early childhood education teacher
Editor
Educational consultant
Educational software developer
Employee assistance counselor
Engagement manager
Entertainer
Ethicist
Fashion designer
Film editor
Genealogist
Geneticist
Grant coordinator
Health technician
Holistic health practitioner
Home health social worker
Human resources development specialist
Human resources recruiter
Industrial organization psychologist
Informational graphics designer
Interior designer
Journalist
Labor relations specialist
Legal mediator
Librarian
Manual arts therapist
Minister/priest
Missionary
Multimedia producer
Musician
Occupational therapist
Outplacement consultant
Philanthropic consultant
Physical therapist
Planned-giving officer
Psychologist
Public health educator
Public health nurse
Religious educator
Religious worker
Researcher
Set designer
Social scientist
Social worker
Special education teacher
Speech-language pathologist/audiologist
Staff advocate (technology consultant)
Translator/interpreter
Writer (poet, novelist)

Ingrid’s summer Shepherd internship almost didn’t happen. In the spring of her junior year, caught between the competing visions of her future, she applied for both a poverty internship and a highly sought-after investment banking internship with Goldman Sachs in New York.

For the poverty internship, she contemplated going to a poor area of Boston to work at a community development center. Too dangerous, her parents said. So she set her sights on D.C., where her older sister lives, and the D.C. Central Kitchen.

She liked that the nonprofit didn’t fit the stereotype of a soup kitchen, distributing handouts from afar with a touch of pity. Instead, the cooking is done by culinary trainees, all recovering addicts, ex-cons and homeless people who are ready to get off the streets. They run the place, telling volunteers what to do, and, after graduating from the kitchen and going on to earn a food handler’s certificate from the city, are ready for full-time employment. It made so much sense to Ingrid: Feed the hungry, use available resources, make human connections, and teach skills that help the poor get themselves out of poverty.

She was all set. Then the offer came from Goldman Sachs. Her parents were ecstatic. It would be the perfect start to a bright future, they told her. But Ingrid was paralyzed. She explored compromises, tried to figure out a way to do both. “You could tell she really wanted to do the Shepherd internship,” says Stacy McLoughlin-Taylor, one of her advisers at W & L. “She just had to figure that out.”

After weeks of stomach-churning indecision, she decided to turn down Goldman Sachs. “There’s either honoring your parents or honoring yourself,” she says. “If it weren’t hard, it wouldn’t be a decision.” When she picked up the phone to break the news to her parents, there was a long silence on the other end. “All you could hear was the crackling on the phone.”

Continue reading “At Elite Washington and Lee University, Poverty 101 is Changing Lives”

Are personality tests biased against introverts?
I need a job but I don’t want to be stereotyped as a crazy loner.
By Cary Tennis, salon.com

Jun. 19, 2006 | Dear Cary,

I am currently searching for a job (I’m not choosy, I just need to pay the bills) and have run into a bit of dilemma.

It’s about the personality tests that have become so ubiquitous even for jobs that require no more skills than sandwich making and tending the cash register.

Now I am basically an ethical, honorable, hardworking person. I don’t do drugs, I’m not mentally ill and I don’t break the law. Unfortunately, I have the “wrong” personality type for many of the jobs I am seeking. I am an introvert. However, the assumption that this somehow means that I am incapable of interacting with the public in a friendly and appropriate manner drives me crazy.

While extroverts have the option of never being alone if they don’t wish to, the introvert must always deal with people on some level. True, they may feel more drained at the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean that the stress is going to cause them to huddle in the corner gibbering or perhaps bring a gun to work and open fire.

Only an idiot would honestly answer “Strongly Agree” to questions such as “I prefer to be alone,” on a test. How many times is the crazed serial killer described by neighbors as “a nice quiet person who kept to himself”? American society is biased against introverts, and it’s little wonder that people would try to “cheat” or “fake” out the personality tests they’re given. They know they can do the job and just want a fair chance to prove it.

The sad thing is that if the pattern of my answers reveals me to be a liar or unethical, it really won’t be an accurate reflection of my personality, just the portrait of someone who’s desperate to pay her bills on time.

So what do you think?

Conflicted

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