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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about the idealism we develop around our perceiving cognitive functions.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- In the last podcast, we discussed idealism with the four judging functions
- Car Model
- ENTP/ENFP share the same dominant perceiving function – Extraverted Intuition ‘Exploration’ Ne
- Exploration = endless freedom
- Always chasing a new shiny object
- Hard to commit to anything
- EPs want to keep their options open at all times
- Purity without having to do any work to gain true mastery
- ENFPs are better at pretending they are following the rules
- ENTPs struggle with this because of their Ti – Introverted Thinking
- ENFPs are good at pretending intimacy with people
- They don’t like saying yes to things they may feel trapped by later
- Ne wants to create impact in the world.
- It wants to see if there is a better way.
- You can’t create a new norm unless you disrupt what is already there and establish something else.
- The polar opposite of Extraverted Intuition is Introverted Sensing ‘Memory’ – Si
- Memory = reviewing memories to get impressions
- The Ideal for Si is purity for all memories.
- Many ISJs spend massive amounts of time on detailed creative hobbies that allow them to shut out the world and its many disruptions.
- ENPs with an inferior Si can choose not to think about the things they don’t want to deal with. Like past trauma.
- When memories start to come up for SJs they don’t have the choice just to push it away as NPs do.
- Reviewing sensory experiences is a compulsion for SJs. To not do so causes depression.
- So they hide or stick to reliable routines.
- Tried and True vs. Hiding from the world
- Ne compulsion is perpetually bouncing from one thing to the other
- Ne requires a foundation to build upon
- Si requires surrender to change
- SJs do pattern recognition work, but it is slow because they have to repattern a whole memory
- Extraverted Sensing ‘Sensation’ Se
- The idealism for Se is an oversimplified version of everything
- “There’s an obvious and simple solution for everything; why aren’t we doing it?”
- Sometimes the obvious solution is the right one. Sometimes it isn’t.
- Se sees no need to study systems or think of complexities.
- The world is full of immediate, actionable solutions that everyone else is too obtuse to see.
- Purity without the work
- Everybody else is the idiot
- This is why they are so good at reacting in real time
- Ne never has to commit
- Si never has to do anything out of its comfort zone
- Se never has to figure out the complexity of things behind the curtain
- “When you have a hammer all the world is a nail.”
- There is a percentage of problems that people do overcomplicate – but not all of them.
- ESPs are always in trouble because they try to simplify problems that require more complex answers.
- Se is the polar opposite of Introverted Intuition ‘Perspectives’ Ni
- Ni gets into other people’s perspectives
- Se worries about what people think of them
- As long as Se can get people on its side, it doesn’t have to think about managing their goodwill
- Se needs to surrender to the idea that there is no such thing as a pure function.
- They have to do the Work.
- Se needs to remember that some problems are more complicated than they think.
- As Se gets more seasoned and mature over time, it starts to recognize the law of diminishing returns on simple solutions.
- Introverted Intuition ‘Perspectives’ Ni
- The ability to shift perspectives and get into other people’s headspace
- They also watch their own mind form patterns
- Ni gets gummed up by sustainability
- Ni can go so long term that they prevent new experiences from happening if it doesn’t look sustainable
- Ni fantasy is the idea that reality can be lived internally before it happens.
- You can have all the answers just by running a simulation
- That sounds like a lot of work to other people, but it is the native language of INJs.
- The work is being present and implementing real time.
- Sjs hide away. NJs conceptualize.
- INTJ who couldn’t stop talking because he was externalizing his inner dialogue at all times – and none of it made sense to anyone but him.
- Stream of consciousness talk
- If he could figure it all out, he could accomplish his dream to be a contributor – showing up in life and engaging.
- Balance it out and engage with the hear and now.
- Get away from purist thought and get into the work.
- Don’t just run a simulation but look for the evidence in front of you, not just the patterns in your mind.
- What is the sensory evidence? How do people see you?
- INJs are all steak and no sizzle, but nobody comes to them for the steak because there’s no sizzle.
- There’s no ability to interface with the world to bring complex solution to complex problems.
- There’s no bridge.
- They are just chasing rabbit trails internally.
- They think the rabbit trails will equate to impact.
- All four perceiving functions have this desire for excellent ROI without having to put in the work.
- Work you need to do:
- Integrate the other side of the polarity and recognize its influence
- Attach your perceiving function to the other functions in your stack – especially functions of the opposite attitude (E/I)
- Recognize you have to do the work. You can’t just exist and be amazing.
- The antidote is the integration of the other side of your polarity.
- Integration = understanding the importance of something and not pushing it away anymore
- If an introverted function has you by the balls, integrate an extraverted function – either the polar opposite or the copilot.
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Podcast - Episode 0265 - Myers-Briggs Judging Function Idealism
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32 comments
Hello Joel and Antonia,
I first wanted to say thank you, you’ve helped me understand myself better as an INFJ. Your podcasts are very informative and helpful, and I also like the Making Peace With Your Parents podcast where Antonia tells her story. It feels like I can connect with you on a deeper level.
I have a question that has been on my mind lately and that is if you have ever noticed a trend where certain types are more likely to be short-tempered than others?
Just to give some context. I’ve always been conflict averse, and I don’t like showing my anger towards people because I know how it feels when someone directs their anger towards me. Growing up my mom appeared to be extraverted and she was very short-tempered, and I was often afraid of doing the wrong thing because I didn’t want to be yelled at. I don’t know her MBTI type because she passed away in my teenage years, however, my grandma has similarities to my mom and she is an ESFJ.
In my life after high school I noticed a pattern of me making friends with woman who had strong and feisty personalities. Ones who were blunt and short-tempered, and if you offended them they were never afraid to get angry at you and speak their minds. Of course this dynamic was unhealthy for me because I would be afraid to stand up to them and would allow them to cross over my boundaries. It’s been quite a journey in learning how to speak up for myself and to set healthy boundaries but one that I needed.
Now back to my question. All these woman were extraverted, however, I’m unsure if they were feelers or thinkers and that got me wondering if feelers or thinkers are more likely to be short-tempered? and would them being an extravert or introvert have anything to do with it? I realize that any personality type can get angry but I just wanted to know if you have noticed any sort of trend where certain types are more likely to be short-tempered?
Take care,
Jessica
To be clear, he wasn’t saying he didn’t take in massive amounts of information, but that he could only collate so much at the same time. I’m sure he takes in TONS of info. He just can’t keep track of it all in the same moment, so needs context and linear thinking to work through it.
A
I had to chuckle at Antonia’s comment about how ENFPs are good at seeming like they’re connecting with people when maybe they are really not reaching the full extent of connection since that is exactly me. I almost always find it easy to get along with people on the surface, but I just can’t seem to figure out how to consciously make deep connections.
Part of this could be the fact that my instinctual stack is sp/so. Really intimate relationships are a blind spot for me. The people I’ve become closest to over the years have either been people I’ve just been in close proximity with for a really long time or people who seemed very determined to get to know me.
I’ve also been mistaken as flirting before when that was not part of my intentions at all. Flirting just feels really inauthentic for me to do intentionally. So, it’s never a strategy I utilize to establish something deeper. But apparantly, by being friendly and curious, that’s the vibe I’ve given off. So, when I’ve gotten feedback that this is how I’ve come off, part of me freezes up and panics. “Oh no, what do I do? I just unintentionally misrepresented myself. I just wanted to be nice. ” I don’t yet have an answer to this question. My instinct is to either metaphorically or literally flee the situation, which I recognize does no one any good.
Unless something I really feel on a moral level, Ne makes it incredibly difficult for me to decide to support one side or the other in a debate or issue. I’ll often verbally float back and forth between the two. I have been told on more than one occasion to “just pick a side already,” to which my response was a smirk and a nope. I feel like this is one manifestation of Ne’s resistance to rules and authority in me personally. I often find that I don’t like any of the options the world seems to present me with, so my gut response is, “Okay then, I guess we’ve got to start from scratch and have a whole new option.”
This is when my tertiary extroverted thinking sometimes pops in and has its moments of insight. If a solution or a plan doesn’t seem like it’s sustainable or feasible, I have this gut reaction of “Back to the drawing board everyone unless someone can provide me with clean, convincing data that this can be done.” For me, Te seems to work better when finding flaws in others’ ideas rather than my own.
Although, sometimes I feel that I need to hold back on my Ne. In some environments, it’s probably wise not to spew Ne insights onto people. It’s sort of a reverse idealism in a way that tricks my brain into doubting whether Ne can find the necessary insights.
I sometimes instinctively fear that if I use too much Ne, I’ll come across as completely wonky. A good example of how I feel I can come off is in the X-Files episode Bad Blood. So, this episode is more or less retelling the events of a case through Mulder’s and Scully’s individual perceptions and each present a very skewed, over exaggerated interpretation of the other. I’m fairly certain Mulder is an INFP, and Scully’s interpretation of him as this almost overenthusiastic puppy who has crazy ideas, impulsively runs off to follow them with little to know explanation, and is just completely unpredictable strikes me as exactly how Ne can come off. It’s not the episode that made me think this, I had this perception long before I saw the episode (which is one of the show’s best in my opinion).
So, I then tend to hold back on Ne because I don’t want to seem like I’m completely nuts. But that’s really unhealthy, so I’ve begun to consciously not restrict my Ne to the point where I fall into the grips of Si. I think I used to do this quite frequently since I got negative feedback about how I came across as an NP when I was younger. I’ve brought up patterns that I’ve recognized that were met with open hostility. Maybe I needed to refine them more, but I have often found that I was onto something in the prematurely expressed pattern. One example is that as a teenager I started to notice there were two different definitions of racism floating around, and conflict starts when people can’t either recognize or accept the difference. I pointed this out online, and was literally told to go kill myself by drinking bleach. Now I have a more educated, mature recognition of the distinction because I’ve spent more time figuring out what the pattern is by exposing myself to the information and conversations in real time. So, now I can explain the difference’s nature and how it causes disputes with depth and nuance instead of just saying, “Hey, there’s a problem in our society where people have these two definitions of a concept and we need to have this understanding when problem solving.” I won’t go to deeply into it, but I’ve found that the simple basis my gut observation was an extremely good connection through further exploration.
Just thought this was an interesting personal evaluation of how this concept could seem to be reversed in some way. Maybe it’s an odd way of thinking about it, but that’s how it strikes me.
I also find that Ne’s tendency to continuously fish for new information and experiences has also been seen in a very negative light. In the past, I’ve been met with hostility after I very calmly asked someone as to why they thought something without contradicting them or devaluing their opinion. Albeit, I tend to ask again when given some variation “That’s just the way it is.” Usually, in those situations I get the sense that an individual who responds with hostility to this sort of conversation usually has not properly thought their belief through and/or has not properly given enough thought to how they should express their viewpoint.
The thing I really want to work on with Ne is how I can better express the patterns I make in real time. I find it can often be extremely had to communicate in a palatable fashion.
Hey Steph! In my experience, Ni works more as a vetting process with a backlog of information to help sift through what’s happening in real time within the Ni-Se polarity. I think it’s trying to create meaning and draw conclusions from the presented information.
Si, meanwhile, has more to do with comfort. I think of it as the voice in your head at the restaurant going “Ehhh…I could try the salmon, but the chicken marsala is just SO GOOD.”
Oh man, this one hit me in the guts. As an ENFJ I’ve been working really hard to develop my copilot Ni but listening to this makes me wonder if I’ve went too far :) It’s far too easy for me to run simulations and make internal connections but not step into the work: being in the present and engaging with the here and now, UNLESS it feels harmonious and physically appealing of course (Driver/10 yr old Loop Gone Wild).
But I know I am called to do deep creative work and produce stories that change the world, and yet I struggle with getting real traction because I keep running the scenarios instead of taking action. I am afraid of imperfection, afraid to waste any more time…and yet by not taking action I am ABSOLUTELY wasting time. Sigh.
How do we grow our copilot but not get stuck there? How do we integrate our healthy polarities to truly be all we are meant to be? My heart aches to be that person. I can see it (Ni joke) but it feels so far away.
So amazingly grateful for the work you do, Joel and Antonia.