INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“And let me tell you something I’ve never told a soul. My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves…we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment, we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lit.

“If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenceless, is capable of providing that food. […] That’s why it’s important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we’re familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it’s easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished. […] You must, of course, take care to light the matches one at a time. If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once they would provide a splendour so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can normally see; and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes, revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born, and summoning us to regain the divine origin we had lost. The soul ever longs to return to the place from which it came, leaving the body lifeless…”

—Laura Esquivel, “Like Water for Chocolate”

The Writing Life
How to summon forth the Secret Author Person within you.
By Laura Zigman
Book World, Washington Post

The first thing you should do when you decide you want to be a writer is to stop yourself from telling anyone you want to be a writer (stick a sock in your mouth if you have to). As a rule, most parents and guidance counselors (dream-killers) will try to dissuade you from following this career path (to nowhere). The root of their lack of support (extreme negativity) is that it’s a painfully unwise (foolish) ambition to have since very few writers earn a living from writing. You will be told:

- to be practical (”Why not try technical writing or corporate communications writing or computer software manual-writing?”)

- to get your head out of the clouds (”And how exactly will poetry pay the bills? The last time I checked, iambic pentameter was not an accepted currency.”)

- to realize that your notion of wanting a career you love can be disproved linguistically (”If work was supposed to be fun it would be called ‘fun,’ not ‘work.’ “)

Since you are young enough to still believe in yourself (instead of only in people who try to talk you out of believing in yourself), you will bring the subject up again (repeatedly, in an oddly masochistic “Groundhog Day” kind of way). You will then be lectured on:

- the value of a dollar (”You can’t just write more money.”)

- what it was like to be in the army (even if that army never actually went anywhere or did anything)

- what it was like growing up during the Depression (depressing).

To top it all off, you will be labeled a dreamer (and the only thing worse than being a dreamer is being a dreamer who is foolish enough to actually pursue a dream).

If you are like most people (me), before you know it, you will agree wholeheartedly with your naysayers. “What was I thinking?” you will say to yourself every time the urge to write surfaces like an unruly weed, which you and everyone else keep trying to beat to death. “What could I possibly have to say that hasn’t already been said by people a thousand times smarter than I will ever be?” Psychologists refer to this as the Stockholm Syndrome — when captives begin to share the views of their captors. You will so fully internalize their message and adopt it as your own that you will eventually forget it wasn’t your opinion to begin with.

You will now enter a long (seemingly placid but emotionally turbulent) period of denial that can sometimes last years (or decades). You will lie. “Who me? Be a writer? And put up with all that rejection? Are you kidding?” You will obfuscate. “Who would want to be a writer? Can you imagine being someone who wanted to be a writer?” When pressed, you will even philosophize: “If a writer writes something that never gets published and is thus never read, is a writer still a writer?”

In order to convince yourself and others that you have “moved on” (accepted defeat without even trying), you will learn to hide in plain sight: You will get a normal job, one with an actual office and an actual desk (engaging in “freelance work” from your apartment or working “odd jobs” with “odd hours” are dead giveaways of your true intentions and unconscious desires). In exchange for your 40 (or 50 or 60) hours a week of work (indentured servitude), you’ll receive a respectable paycheck (let’s be frank: not much more than you made waitressing in high school at the International House of Pancakes or working the drive-thru at Burger King) and medical benefits (to pay for psychotherapy, twice a week, to deal with the stress of all your repression). Most important, your job will provide you with some financial security and emotional stability (not to mention the perfect opportunity for people watching, eavesdropping, Internet research and working on something — Fiction? Nonfiction? Comedy? Tragedy? — even if you don’t yet know what that something is).

In addition to the macro-lie (yourself as Career Drone), you’ll see that you need to make up lots of little lies to protect your true identity (Secret Writer Person). You’ll have to appear ambitious and deserving of promotions (show up before noon); pretend to embrace any and all career-enhancing business trips and client interactions (even though you see any time away from your true calling as a soul-deadening, blood-sucking diversion); and continue to dress the part (never complaining about how dumb it is that you have to spend all your money on work clothes when you could be home writing your novel in your pajamas).

And then one day, out of the blue, just when you think you’re finally lost in the jungle, you will see it. You will look at all the papers and files and meaningless detritus on your desk, you will watch all your wonderfully idiosyncratic co-workers racing busily around the office, talking of Michelangelo, and you will stop whatever it is you are doing. The world you’ve tried so hard to join will suddenly cease to exist, and you will finally see that life without your dream is a wasteland; that you must at least try to do the thing you really want to do even if, in the end, you do not succeed at it. You will be tempted to put the better-to-have-loved-and-lost rule in parentheses, like everything else in your life that you’ve sidelined and tried to ignore up until now, but you will resist and settle for multiple hyphens instead. It is a step. You are about to head into the great unknown, and you will be tempted to throw away the map to your lost world in triumph, but don’t — you will need something to write on.

“Highly creative, artistic and spiritual, they can produce wonderful works of art, music and literature. INFPs are natural artists.”

“Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it’s complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that, in most people, are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an ‘individual,’ each of them is a ‘multitude.’”

Continue reading “The Creative Personality”

“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

Continue reading…