infp Blog

INFP Advantages: Authenticity

Corin — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:59:43 +0000

Being an INFP can make life easier not harder.

No matter what MBTI type, people want to be happy and to feel fulfilled. Fulfillment comes from meeting our Six Needs. Happiness derives from feeling we have a control over the direction of our lives. INFPs have natural qualities that make both easier.

Some of those qualities are Authenticity, Adaptability, Intuition. This post focuses on authenticity.

How Authenticity Improves Our Lives

Being authentic means being genuine with yourself and with others. Authenticity requires that a person be honest about themselves and their motivations.

How many times in our lives have we gone after a goal and realized that goal wasn’t what we wanted? It was what our parents wanted or what society expected or what we thought would make us look cool. Being more honest doesn’t mean that we would change our actions, but it would make us more aware of our values.

Maybe we did go into a profession because of our parents. That only means that we valued our parent’s concern for us more than taking a risk into desired career. Maybe we take up activities to make us look better in the eyes of our peers but our heart isn’t in it. That only means we value the good opinion of our peers.

Understanding our values helps us understand which needs are most important to us. Doing as your parents wanted means that Love and Connection Needs (getting parents approval) are more important than Growth Needs (taking a risk towards non-parent approved career). If we are unhappy, perhaps those needs are in the wrong order or we need to meet our Love and Connection needs in other ways.

Clear values helps us evaluate which goals are more important than others because those are the goals that meet our most important needs. Knowing that our goals are meeting our needs gives us a sense of control in our lives and instead of feeling like we’re blindly groping forward. That sense of control in feeling that we are directing our lives makes us happier.

All of this happens if we strive to be honest is ourselves. We are more authentic, more genuine when we stop trying to fool ourselves.

Authenticity in INFPs

“To thine own self be true.” – Shakespeare

Authentic INFPs have learned to align our two worlds. Our external world is our presentation. It’s who we present to get along. Our internal world is our Identity. It’s who we are when we feel safe from judgment.

When Presentation and Identity become too disconnected, INFPs feel they’ve lost touch with themselves.

If our Presentation is employee but our Identity is artist, artistic INFPs don’t feel they’re lost if they continue practicing their art even though it’s not what they’re paid to do. It’s the artistic INFPs that put aside their art that feel hopeless and lost because they’ve put aside their Identity.

INFPs value authenticity because our auxiliary cognitive function of External Intuition is always searching for the hidden meanings and separating the true from the false. What INFPs value externally, we bring internally. INFPs want feel more authentic more genuine in how we live our lives. It’s our path to our Ideal Self.

Getting In Touch With the Authentic Us

In order to take advantage of our authenticity, we first have to find it.

1. Seek Solitude

INFPs want to be liked. That needs for Love & Connection and Critical Significance require other people’s acknowledgment. INFPs become less true to ourselves seeking that acknowledgment.

We need distance from others in order to separate our wants from what others want us to be. Solitude lets us strip off all the layers of protection built up against the real world. We can’t find our personal honesty until we remove those layers.

2. Understand our motivations

Our reasons are our why’s. Why do we do what we do? Thomas Payne said that people have two reasons to do something: a good reason and the real reason.

A good reason is what we tell others and convince ourselves is the noble cause of our actions. The real reason is what actually motivates our actions. That real reason is usually to fill an unmet need.

For example, when we get a job that we don’t feel is right, are we getting it for stability (Certainty needs), because we think people will think better of us (Critical Importance needs) or because it we think it will help us later (Growth needs)?

Once if figure out which need is being filled, it gives us the opportunity fill that need with something that does feel right. We can take different actions that align with our values.

3. Accept our flaws

Sometimes our reasons aren’t unique or enlightening or particularly noble. Sometimes our reasons don’t make us look very good. Those petty reasons for our actions make us feel flawed. INFPs want perfection especially in ourselves.

However, perfection makes everyone the same. The difference between a hand woven rug and a machine made rug is the handwoven rug will have imperfection. A human made it with the human possibility of making an error. Those imperfections make a hand woven rug unique.

It’s the same with people. It’s our flaws and the lives create despite them that gives us our individuality.

Using our Advantage

The next step to all knowledge is action. Knowledge without action is just potential. INFPs have been starving on the steady diet of our potential all our lives.

The object is to use our natural inclination to be authentic to meet needs and to regain a sense of control in our lives. Take the small step of goal setting because it will do both.

The First Small Step

1. Write down your goals.
2. For each goal, write down all the reasons you want to achieve that goal

Without step two, step one is worthless. Figuring our reasons aligns values with goals.

Being authentic means being honest. Those reasons don’t to have to be noble. Goal setting is being selfish because it’s all about what brings us happiness.

INFPs get enamored by something we think should make us happy only to find out later that it wasn’t what we really wanted. Being honest with ourselves minimizes these false starts because our goals will be meeting our real needs.

When climbing the ladder of success, make sure it’s leaning against the right wall. The right wall for an INFP is the one the takes us closer to our Ideal. The wrong wall is the one takes us closer to who we think our Ideal should be. Authenticity lets us differentiate the two.

How I Make This Work For Me

I’m in the process of goal setting this week. It’s taken about three months of almost completely eliminating my social schedule and changing my routines in order to find the distance I need.

Goal setting is time consuming. Writing the reasons takes longer than writing the goal. As I’m writing those reasons, I let the dominant INFP Intuitive Feeling kick into high gear. That cognitive function runs wild if I let it and I’m letting it determine if those reasons I write ring true or if I’m just convincing myself because I want them to be true.

My goals are all brainstormed in one sitting. I’m taking several days to figure out my reasons. Additionally, I’m writing which of the Six Needs each goal is trying to fulfill.

For example, one of my goals is to climb Kilimanjaro which fills my Growth need and my Critical Importance need. It fills my Growth need because at this time I’m nowhere where near the shape physically or financially to complete the goal. It fills my Critical Importance needs because I get to tell people I did it.

Yes, filling that Critical Importance needs seems self-indulgent. But in meeting our needs, we have to accept that we can’t be who we think other people think will like.

Our authenticity and our happiness depends on it.

Making a Better Decision

Corin — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:08:07 +0000

I love TED videos because they make me rethink my view of the world. In the video, Harvard psychologist and happiness expert Dan Gilbert explains why we make bad decisions.

I’m going to explain how I think it applies to INFPs.

Since the video is long, here are the important parts:

Expected Value of Anything = (Odds of Gain) x (Value of Gain)
People make poor decisions because we make errors in estimating Odds of Gain and errors in estimating Value of Gain.
Using memory makes us prone to errors in Odds.
Shifting comparisons make us prone to errors in Value

In the video, Dan gives specific examples about how people commonly make mistakes estimating Odds of Gain and Value of Gain.

How an INFP Values Anything

INFPs value things ideally in order to get our ideal outcome.

The basic formula of Expected Value of Anything = (Odds of Gain) x (Value of Gain) becomes:

Ideal Expected Value of Anything = (Maximum Odds of Gain) x (Maximum Value of Gain).

In other words:

Perfection = (Being Almost Positive We’ll Get What We Want) x (What We Get Is Everything We Wanted)

What This Means In Real Life

When INFPs approach life in terms of the ideal, we expect that any endeavor we embark upon will give us the possibility of the best probable outcome.

Ideal New Friendship = (Best chances of becoming friends) x (Becoming best friends)

Ideal Career Path = (Best chance of getting that career) x (Complete career fulfillment)

If we can’t get something perfect, INFPs feel less motivated to do it. However, that Ideal isn’t a fixed point but a range. For example:

Maximum Odds of Gain – Best chances of becoming friends

Best Case: everything clicks and we can talk easily with this new person like we’ve known them all our lives
Worst Case We’ll Accept: It could be a challenge, as long as this new person doesn’t do this, this and this and we’ll be okay with it.

Maximum Value of Gain – Becoming best friends

Best Case: They value us as much as we value them and they’ll do as we would do for them
Worse Case We’ll Accept: They don’t have to drop everything every time I call just as long as I know that I’m at least in their top 5 or 10 or whatever.

The Worst Case We’ll Accept is different among INFPs. We know everything isn’t going to be absolutely Perfect and that nothing turns out as flawlessly as we imagine in our head. That range from Best Case to Worse Case We’ll Accept is our buffer zone. The closer the Odds of Gain or Value of Gain moves toward the Worse Case We’ll Accept, the less ideal that new friendship becomes.

Maybe that new person says they’ll call back but doesn’t or maybe we find it more difficult to talk to that person. Every time an incident occurs that doesn’t fit our preconceived image of the ideal, the Odds or Value starts dropping towards the Worse Case We’ll Accept. If this happens often enough, we discover that the Expected Value of Friendship was much less than we imagined. We get bored. It’s too difficult. It’s less than our range for perfect. So we stop trying to become friends with this person.

The Dunning–Kruger effect

When it comes to estimating our Odds of Gain, INFPs overestimate our ability to achieve that goal. For me, this was especially true when it came to college and career. At 20, I wanted to be a best selling author. I had wrote in high school and won a couple of contests. Since we estimate Odds of Gain from our past, I estimated that if I worked really hard in college, got enough critique to improve my writing, I was assured a spot on the Times Bestsellers List.

Also, all the comparison to past successes in my head made me extremely susceptible to a cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Basically, this effect occurs when people reach bad conclusions and make bad decisions but are unskilled to recognize they’ve made a bad decision. In other words, people who really don’t know what they’re doing assume that they’re doing it better than average and people who are really good at what they do think they’re worse at it than they actually are.

I estimated my writing ability to my subjective past successes and not to anything objective. I overestimated by Odds of Gain. The only way to become better at estimating your own ability and your Odds of Gain is to become better at what you’re doing. I joined small critique groups which made me a better writer and as I got better at writing, I realized that I wasn’t as good as I thought which dropped my estimate of Odds of Gain down to the point where it was below my Worse Case We’ll Accept.

I see that happening when INFPs changing careers in college. They attend university thinking that they’ll be really in good in one career until long hours and grades sub par to their ideal make them realize that getting to their chosen career is taking much more effort than they thought. More effort means that they might never be as good as someone who’s in the same class and whizzing by with little effort. So to the INFP, their Odds of Gain diminishes with every mediocre outcome and their Ideal Expected Value of the career diminishes to the point where they switch majors to something more ideally suited for them.

For me, I dropped out of school instead of switching majors.

Why INFPs Drop Projects

INFPs drop projects because the Expected Value falls out of our ideal range. We discovered that our estimates were off so why do something if we know it’s not going to turn out within our range of perfect?

I think this is the biggest reason why INFPs get good at things but not great at things. We start a hobby, a sport, an activity. We work at it and improve our skills over the years until we get good enough to estimate that we’ll probably never be great (Value of Gain). Sometimes knowing that more time and effort won’t make us great at something drops our Value of Gain to below our Worse Case We’ll Accept. It’s at this point, we find a new interest and go to the next thing.

Estimating Better

It’s not as if as INFPs, we are blindly deluding ourselves when it comes to estimating Odds of Gain. However, we estimate our odds of getting something as if we were our Ideal Self and not as our current Becoming Self. If we were already our ideal, getting what we want (Odds of Gain) would be as we imagined it would be.

To become better, we need to estimate Odds of Gain based on the person we are now. This drops the Expected Value from that absolute Ideal to a more subjective “ideal for who we are”. Also, finding more about our Value of Gain by asking and researching those who have gotten what we wanted gives a us a more accurate estimate of Value of Gain instead of using our imagination to gives us our imagined Best Scenario. Doing these two things, gives an INFP a more realistic Expected Value in order to base our decision on whether to take on an endeavor.

Yes, we are lowering our expectations. However, doing this gives us something more valuable in return–the possibility of more. If we base our decisions on Ideal Expected Value then in the best possible scenario, we will only get what we expect. If we base our decisions on a more realistic Expected Value, we open the possibility of doing better than we expected.

Fulfilling our needs

Corin — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:38:05 +0000

I’ve never been a fan of Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs because I never saw people moving from Physiological needs to Self-Actualization in any type of linear progression. We jump around. Sometimes love is more important than eating. Sometimes people forgo love completely for esteem through achievement.

Instead, I prefer Tony Robbins definition of the six basic human needs.

Certainty – This is our need to be free from constant worry. In order to achieve this we develop a certain amount of consistency like getting a job or buying a house. We don’t want to worry everyday about how we’re going to eat or where we can sleep safely.

Uncertainty – This is our need for variety. If we knew everything that was ever going to happen in our lives then our lives would be boring.

Critical Significance – This is our need to feel special. Some people make a lot of money to feel significant. Other people get a lot of tattoos. It’s different for everyone.

Love and Connection – This is our need for belonging. We don’t want to feel like we’re all alone inside our heads and our lives.

Growth – This is our need to avoid stagnation. Our lives never reach equilibrium. We are either growing or dying. If we stay at the same point in our lives for long enough, our level of happiness declines.

Contribution – This is our need to feel our lives are more than just ourselves. We don’t want to die feeling like our lives made no difference to anyone.

Achievement vs Fulfillment

Achievement comes from being successful in one or more of these areas. Fulfillment comes from not feeling lack in every area.

Achievement gives us short term happiness. We get a really good job and make a lot of money or we build the largest ball of twine and we meet our need of critical significance. It gives us self-confidence in that area. However, if the other areas are lacking we feel unhappy.

No matter how much success we have, if love is lacking and we feel disconnected from others, we’re unhappy. If we have a great family and friends and we feel totally connected, but we feel that we haven’t done much else to reach our dreams then our Growth need hasn’t been met and we feel like were in a rut.

Lasting happiness doesn’t mean great achievement in all these areas. To feel fulfilled, we only have to meet our basic needs in each area so we don’t feel like we are missing something from our lives.

Meeting Multiple Needs

Everything we do meets multiple needs. We don’t do one thing just to meet one need. I write this blog to meet my need for Critical Significance and Contribution. When my wife and I adopted, that decision lead to meeting our needs for Love and Connection, Contribution, Growth and Uncertainty.

I’ve found that certain Need combinations are healthier than others. The big combination I avoid is trying to mix Love and Connection with Critical Significance. This is the combination that gives you helicopter parents with a control issues. I think it also leads to deciding to have kids to save failing marriages and staying with people that treat you poorly.

When we combine needs we can focus on a fewer actions to meet those needs. Focusing on fewer things let’s us be better at those things. That’s how you a person gets both achievement and fulfillment.

Good vs Bad Need Combinations for INFPs

Good: Love and Connection with Growth – This keeps us focused on letting people into our lives that make us a better person.

Bad: Love and Connection with Critical Significance – This leads to neediness and unbalanced relationships because all relationship have a degree of Uncertainty and we get desperate if we see that relationship ending.

Good: Critical Significance and Contribution – This combination lets us do great things to help other people. It makes us have lives that isn’t just about us.

Bad: Critical Significance and Uncertainty – We get bored as INFPs. This leads us to taking stupid risks in order to feel more alive. This could be moving across the country or leave jobs and people. This is why we fall into intense relationships and start getting restless when we are finally confronted with the day-to-day realities of a relationship.

Good: Growth with anything except Certainty – Growth means having goals and getting to somewhere we aren’t yet. It means taking calculated risk. You can’t grow by doing more of staying where you are.

Bad: Critical Significance and Certainty – This is our desire to be right overcoming our desire to be effective. Thinking and being different than everyone else makes us feel special. However, we hold onto beliefs to feel special even though we realize that those beliefs haven’t made us happy.

Our Order of Needs

The order of importance of our needs is different from person to person. The order of importance is based on values. Some value Love and Connection over Critical Significance. Some value Contribution over Certainty.

Each unmet Need is a hurt. We hurt in that area. However, like our physical bodies we usually focus on our greatest hurt. If we’re in a car crash and we break our femur, we’re not going to feel the contusions our face. It’s the same with Needs. If Love and Connection is our highest Need, we’re not going to feel unmet Certainty Needs. After a breakup with someone we love, we don’t care about our job or if we eat.

Single people spend a lot of time being single. Broke people spend a lot of time being broke. Unhappy people spend a lot of time being unhappy. We focus on and talk about the things that are causing hurt in our lives. Unfortunately what we focus on becomes more real.

You know why people get into accidents by hitting the only tree in the middle of nowhere. They lose control of the wheel for a second and the first thing they do is focus on the thing they don’t want. Don’t hit that tree. Don’t hit that tree. And they end up hitting that tree because by focusing on the tree, their hands are unconsciously turning the wheel towards the tree.

It’s the same with all areas of our life. The more we focus on our lack, the more we turn the wheel of our lives towards that lack. Haven’t you ever heard people say, I found the husband/wife shortly after I decided to stop looking? It’s not that they stopped looking. It’s because they focused on something else other than being lonely.

Growth is the easiest Need to meet

Even though we may value other needs more intensely, Growth is the easiest to meet because it doesn’t require anyone else.

Certainty requires that someone else give us a job or that the grocery store doesn’t close early or the tax law doesn’t change or a variety of things beyond our control. Uncertainty requires outside situations because we only do things that surprise us when we are forced to. Critical Significance requires other people to recognize we did something significant. Love and Connection requires someone else for us to love. Contribution requires someone to reap the fruits of our efforts.

Growth is the only need that doesn’t require someone else. Growth is decision and action. We grow every time we make a decision and commit to it by taking action towards that decision. We grow by taking small actions each day to become our Ideal Self. If our Ideal Self is someone who is self-confident. We set a small goal each day and accomplish that small to build our confidence. If our Ideal Self is loving, we learn to consistently do thing to show that love for the people we care about. Growing is doing.

It’s from focusing on Growth that gives INFPs the self-confidence to attract those things and people into our lives that let us meet our other needs.

Happiness means burning bridges

Corin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:37:06 +0000

Watch the video.

If you don’t have the 21 minutes to watch the video, here’s the important parts:

Two kinds of happiness – There are two kinds of happiness: natural happiness and synthetic happiness. Natural happiness is happiness we get when get what we want. Synthetic happiness is synthesized happiness. It’s happiness we make when we don’t get what we want.

Natural happiness is not better – Synthetic happiness produces a measurable, testable change. People are not just making it up when they say they’re happy despite not getting what they want. The video talks about an experiment that was done to prove this.

Before choosing, choices promote natural happiness – When you don’t have to choose, having a lot of choices makes you naturally happy.

After choosing, choices inhibit the creation of synthetic happiness – When we have the ability to change our minds, we become less happy because we aren’t sure if we made the right decision. The video talks about a Harvard psychological experiment that demonstrates this.

How this applies to INFPs

INFPs have problems making decisions for two reasons:

We want to make the right choice, the perfect choice. We end up wasting a lot of time trying to gather up enough data for us to choose. This could be anything from which career to pursue to where to eat today.
After we make the choice and as soon as the first sign of adversity hits us, we start thinking that if we had made the perfect choice then we wouldn’t have all these problems. So we start second guessing that choice. Should we have chosen something else?

It’s this second guessing that inhibits our ability to find happiness in the choice we made. This is synthetic happiness and I believe synthetic happiness is real. I believe it’s real because INFPs create synthetic happiness all the time.

Every time on a forum thread where I see an INFP saying that the world wasn’t created for INFPs to successful that’s an INFP creating synthetic happiness. I see the creation of synthetic happiness in every excuse INFPs use to blame our unhappiness on things we believe are outside their control (I’m shy and can’t meet people, the world doesn’t understand me). We make ourselves better by saying that our lot in life isn’t really our choice.

Second guessing kills happiness and success

Could we have made a better choice? Maybe. Here’s the real question. How much time are we going to waste wondering if we made the right decision instead of fully committing to the decision we did make?

Success and self-esteem go hand-in-hand. When we succeed at something we feel better about ourselves. Success and happiness aren’t directly related because we can succeed at something unimportant which won’t make us happy. There’s a saying. When climbing the ladder of success, make sure it’s leaning against the right wall.

I’m talking about all types of success. Success at making friends. Success at becoming financially stable. Success at becoming our Ideal Self. However, success requires dedication and full commitment. INFPs never make that full commitment because think we can go back and make a better choice.

Success doesn’t lead to happiness, but the self-confidence we gain will keep us going until we finally succeed at something that does bring natural happiness. So if natural happiness comes from getting what we want? Does this mean we’re unhappy getting to what we want? Of course, people can be happy in the journey, but it’s the happiness we find in the journey. It’s the happiness we make. It’s synthetic happiness.

Burning bridges leads to happiness

When we have no choice but to succeed, we will do everything we can possibly do not to fail. We will work our asses off to not fail because failing means dire consequences.

When I was 19, I moved out my parent’s house. I just couldn’t live with them and their rules any longer. So with no job, one month’s rent and telling my parents I’m never speaking to them again, I moved in with some friends. I had to find a job fast, anything. I couldn’t fail because I had nowhere else to go. I ended up finding a job serving popcorn at a movie theater.

I didn’t waste anytime second-guessing my decision because I couldn’t unmake my decision. It was do or die. So instead of that energy focused behind me. All my energy was focused on succeeding. I was never happier.

Committing to choices means risk especially if we can’t go back. INFPs rarely regret the choices we made that didn’t turn out well because it makes us into the people we are. INFPs regret the choices we didn’t make because it’s another lost opportunity to discover more about ourselves. It’s another chance to become our Ideal Self that we didn’t take.

The best thing about making choices we can’t back out of, we are happier. As that Harvard experiment in the video demonstrates, we come to decide that we like the decision we made because we don’t have a choice.

Healthy procrastination

Corin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:48:50 +0000

I like junk food. I love Kit Kat bars and triple chocolate cheesecake. I like soda.

About a month a go, I stopped drinking two sodas each day. I use to get to work in the morning and drink a Mountain Dew for the caffeine. Then I’d have a Coke with lunch. If I was going out that night to eat with friends then it would be another Coke plus at least 1 or 2 refills.

Then I stopped, but not completely. I’ve had three sodas in the last month. I don’t think I’ll ever stop completely because I like soda. I like a lot of things that have no nutritional value, but I don’t eat Kit Kat bars and triple chocolate cheesecake with dinner every night.

That’s why I’m don’t think I will ever stop procrastination. Although junk foods have little nutritional value, they taste really good filling up my stomach. Like junk food, I have junk activities. I enjoy these activities immensely but they do little to advance my quality of life. Television is enjoyable but it’s just junk food for my life. It fills up my time but has very low life value.

Eating enough junk food on a regular basis makes us unhealthy. If we do enough junk activities consistently, we develop low self-esteem. We can feel our life congealing around us like extra pounds added to our body. It’s a slow process. We don’t wake up one day and we’re fat much like we don’t wake up one day and have low-self esteem.

Procrastination isn’t the real issue

When we procrastinate, we avoid doing something we feel is unpleasant. However, everything I’ve ever procrastinated on I’ve completed on time. I make my deadlines. I get the results I need. It may be stressful for a short period, but short bursts of stress is healthy if spread out of over time.

The real issue is what we do when we procrastinate. For example, let’s say we have four hours to clean the house before guests come over. We know it will take 30 minutes. It’s our activities during those 3.5 hours before we clean that causes problems.

We start filling that time with fillers. Time fillers are like white bread. White bread is all calories and no nutritional value. Time filler activities suck up time without adding life value. Doing them doesn’t feel like a junk activity until we ask how has that activity improved our lives while we were procrastinating.

How procrastination really harms you

All activities fall into four categories.

Urgent/Important – Things we’ve been procrastinating that we’ve almost run out of time to do.

Not-Urgent/Important – Quality of life activities. Critical activities that have high consequences that we still have of time to get done. Stuff that gets procrastinated.

Urgent/Not-Important – Phone calls from people. Life drama that diverts our attention.

Not-Urgent/Not-Important – Time fillers. Taste great but life-fattening activities.

When the deadline for the activity we avoided doing comes close, we work hard in short bursts to achieve the results required or face consequences. This doesn’t cause issues unless we need do it again right away.

When INFPs procrastinate, we go into avoidance mode. We seek comfort in the Not-Important activities. It’s our reward first for our short burst of frenzied work later. Meanwhile the Not-Urgent/Important stuff that’s time sensitive starts creeping into the Urgent/Important category. So it feels like were always stressed from going from one crisis to another. Those repeated short bursts of stress-filled activity starts wearing us down day after day until we shut down.

Procrastination seeps the self-esteem. Self-esteem comes from how we feel about what we do. INFPs do realize that even though we may enjoy video games, playing World of Warcraft 12 hours a day doesn’t improve the quality of our lives, it only alleviates the current quality of life. Mass consumption of time with Not-Important activities is like eating cheesecake all the time. Eventually, we stop feeling well.

Procrastinate with high quality of life activities

When we’re not doing something that has a deadline, we’re doing something else. Improving our lives comes from doing something else with a high quality of life value instead of time fillers that are all empty life calories.

Anything that falls into the Not-Urgent/Important category is something we don’t have to do later. Doing those items keeps us from procrastinating on those items later. If we fill up all our procrastination time with high quality of life activities, our self-esteem will never feel starved from lack of psychological nutrition.

Doing what’s left isn’t healthy

If you enjoy cheesecake and ice cream as much as I do, stopping makes no sense. Why stop doing something you like?

The question is how much and how often?

How much cheesecake do I really want to eat? How much television do I really want to watch? Often times, we eat what we have left in the kitchen. Sometimes, what’s left may only be condiments.

We do activities that we have left. Filling the pantry of our time means having goals we feel are worth accomplishing. It means having goals we can act upon now. Without these goals, what’s left is television and Googling things we wish we could have one day.

Rewarding doesn’t work for INFPs

Conventional wisdom tells us to reward ourselves after we’ve accomplished something or have cheat days where one day a week, we can eat whatever we like.

For INFPs, this doesn’t work. INFPs are defined by doing what we feel. If something feels good, not doing it feels like lack. It feels like denial of who we are.

This means that anything in the Not-Urgent/Important category must make us as feel as good as our time fillers. This takes reframing. Shakespeare in Hamlet said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Everything is about how we interpret it.

For me, eating vegetables doesn’t taste as good as eating cheesecake. However, the feeling I get from knowing that every day my health is improving, that I’ll be able to do more and keep up with my kids as they get older, feels just as good as the sense of decadence I get from a really good triple chocolate cheesecake.

For an INFP, anything we do that’s Not-Urgent/Important has to make as feel as good as watching television or whichever junk activity we like best. If we cannot reframe how we feel about these high quality of life activities, then we’ll always feel like we’re not being ourselves when we do these activities.

Why not stop altogether

Because it feels good. Junk activities feel good as they should. However, they shouldn’t feel better than the high quality of life activities.

This way when we choose an activity to feel time, we aren’t choosing between what feels good and what doesn’t. We are choosing between what moves us forward and what doesn’t.

What Does It Mean

Corin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:58:18 +0000

It’s officially been one year since I launched my blog. I’d like to thank all my readers for reading my very long posts and for commenting. I appreciate it so much.

My favorite card in the Tarot major arcana is the Fool. I think The Fool is the INFP card. He represents wisdom without reason. He represents the beginning of a journey and journey’s end. Like INFPs, we are always starting our journey to our Ideal Self and that the same time, we are who we are.

In one hand, the Fool holds a flower that represents the appreciation for beauty. Over his shoulder is a stick representing wisdom which dangles a small bag with the few belongings he actually needs. At his foot, there’s a dog which represents reality or the real world always nipping at his heels. The Fool seems oblivious to the precipice that he’s about to step over. INFPs, like the Fool, live on the edge of reality always moments from falling over and being lost forever in our dream world.

The Fool is the card of infinite possibilities. It’s also the card of blind faith. When it appears in the spread, it can signal a restarting of your life and that great change is coming. I like the Fool card because it reminds me of my favorite quote by T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started… and know the place for the first time.”

That exploration is the INFP journey to find our Ideal Self. We will find it where we started but only have our travels are done. The Fool has always held special meaning for me.

However, that isn’t why I started my blog on April 1st. I just thought it was cute and ironic that I start on a day that people associate with joking. Attaching meaning to my blog with how the start date relates to the Fool and April first being the start of the 2nd quarter was something I did later. For me, meaning comes later. It works better that way.

As INFPs, we continually search for meaning. What does it all mean? What’s a meaningful job that I would like? We want meaning in our lives to find some order in a seemingly random and uncaring world. We imagine what we think would be the perfect job for us then we pursue it. We create this image of the perfect girl or guy for us and then we look to the outside to find someone to match that image. We start with a belief in an ideal and look outside to find that ideal.

The problem is that the world outside our head isn’t perfect. It’s messy and complicated and a Fool’s blind faith has never gotten us to the perfect picture we imagined. Trying to figure out meaning first and then trying to make the world prove that such meaning can exist is backwards. It’s like the scientist that has theory and then tries to find facts to prove that theory. The apple dropped on Newton’s head first and then he came up with his Laws of Motion, not the other way around.

Meaning is theory. Theory exists to explain facts. That’s how it’s always been done. Our ancestors looked into the sky and saw stars and the darkness between and then created their mythology to impose meaning onto the emptiness. INFPs want meaning to come first and wonder why re-inventing the wheel isn’t getting us as far in life as we had dreamed. Of course when things don’t work out, INFPs have no problem attaching meaning second.

If we never got the awesome job and we have debt, that must mean that money is evil. If we were never surrounded by the crowd of adoring friends, that must mean that we’re so special that only a few people will ever truly understand us. If all the relationships we’ve had ended badly, that much mean all women/men are generally jerks and we just have to be more careful the next time. INFPs attach meaning after the facts all the time, but usually only when bad things happen.

It’s more fun to attach meaning after good things happen. Whenever I go somewhere, if I find a convenient parking space right away then I know I was meant to be there. I always seem to find great parking so I’m always meant to be wherever I am.

INFPs think that finding meaning first will make things better. If we can figure out what would be a meaningful job then we’ll be happy when we finally get that job. What INFPs don’t seem to grasp is that meaning makes things bearable, it doesn’t make things better. Unless we love our job, a crappy job is still a crappy job even if it means something to us. Unless someone enjoys being in a war zone being shot at daily, the meaning that person finds in patriotism makes the job worthwhile, but it doesn’t make the job better. Unless someone enjoy the endless parade of other people’s problems, then any meaning they find in helping people isn’t going to make them like their psychiatry job more.

INFPs can have jobs we like and have those jobs be meaningful. However, we have to find something we like first and then figure out why it’s worthwhile to be doing the job later. It’s easy and natural for INFPs to do what we like. We act immediately to do the things we like. However when we try to find meaning first, we are always wondering if we can live with it if we find out we don’t like it later. Meaning is complicated. Attaching meaning first leaves us with this nagging feeling, as we pursue our wants, about whether or not we’re going to like what we wanted when we get it. That nagging feeling holds us back from fully committing to our endeavors which is why INFPs never succeed as well as we hoped.

So what does this blog mean to me in the long term? I don’t know yet. What I know now is that, I like writing it. That’s why I’m writing. Isn’t doing something because we like it worthwhile in itself?

Blog Review: Year One

Corin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:35:46 +0000

On April 1st, this blog will be a year old. Yes, I chose that date on purpose.

So how do I feel I did? Okay, I guess.

That’s not a great answer. Unfortunately, this year that’s the best answer I have because I didn’t set clear goals when I started this blog. When I set clear goals for success, happiness is simple.

With clear, measurable goals, I get one of two results. Either I complete my goals and after having a success, I get a self-esteem boost which makes me happy. Or I don’t complete my goals and after having a failure event, I am unhappy. Those two states are productive states for me because I celebrate when I’m happy and I make new plans when I’m unhappy. I don’t mope when an action doesn’t get my desired results because I start thinking about all the possible new actions I should take next.

For this blog, I avoided measurable goals. I have a bad tendency not set goals when I’m in a low period because I don’t want to risk failing. It’s a vicious cycle. I start a new project to boost my self-esteem and to get myself out of my down cycle, but then I avoid setting goals. I feel great for a few weeks or months because the project is something new and exciting. However as my project continues, I feel less and less motivated because I haven’t set goals so I don’t know if I’m doing good or bad. Eventually, I’m just doing something new that’s become old and I forget why I bothered in the first place which puts me back in my down cycle.

Having no set goals means I can’t fail. Not failing is very comfortable place to exist. Not failing helps me avoid being unhappy. Unfortunately, being not unhappy is not the same thing as being happy. Not failing isn’t the same as having a success. Any measure of discomfort that I avoid from not failing is outweighed by the gradual loss of self-esteem by not succeeding over long periods of time.

Without clear goals and more importantly, written goals, I neither succeeded nor failed. With this blog, some things went better than I thought and others didn’t even come close. So what I’m left with is this in-between state where happiness is fuzzier. What I dislike about this in-between state is the time I waste trying to figure out how I feel about a project. I would feel stuck which would turn into procrastination. What I was really doing was attempting to make up my mind whether to quit or to continue.

Don’t worry, I’m not quitting this blog. If this would have been 10 years ago, you wouldn’t be seeing new posts for a month while I was making up my mind. Nowadays, it takes an hour. I do my Wrong-Right-Zero Base process.

Wrong: What did I do wrong with the blog?
Right: What did I do right with the blog?
Zero Base: Knowing what I know now, would I have started this blog in the first place last year?

What I did wrong

I started two blogs

I started INFP Blog and my personal blog around the same time I joined Twitter. I wanted to use Twitter to drive traffic to both, but I couldn’t do both effectively. I stopped writing on INFP Blog for 5 months because I was busy redesigning, networking and writing for my personal blog. I shouldn’t have done both.

I didn’t set up FeedBurner

I should have set up FeedBurner sooner. My blog is information. Having a news feed gives readers the option to subscribe to that information. Giving people more choices is never a bad thing. WordPress has it’s own news feed, but using FeedBurner lets me count my number of subscribers.

What I did right

Naming my blog “INFP Blog”

I considered a more artsy, esoteric name for my blog, but after 14 years in web development, I knew the name “INFP Blog” would be better for SEO (search engine optimization). I estimated that I’d get 20% of my traffic from Google. I was wrong. Google brings me 50-55% of my site traffic.

Social networking on the forums

Originally, I planned to drive traffic solely from Twitter. Then I remembered how much dialogue occurred on Tribe and MySpace INFP groups. Globalchatter, the biggest INFP forum at the time, had recently shut down. INFPs have always grouped online so I knew the Globalchatter community would move elsewhere. I tracked down the most active forums and started commenting. I get around 20% of my traffic from commenting on forums.

Waited on my site redesign

After redesigning my personal blog and getting zero traffic. I decided to focus on INFP Blog. Instead of spending a lot of initial time and effort on the design, I concentrated on writing and networking. I knew I didn’t have energy for both. Focusing on the networking and writing attracted readers and comments which motivated me to keep writing. Otherwise, I think I would have been burned out trying to redesign and build traffic.

Zero Based Thinking

Zero Based Thinking is letting go of all the time and energy I invested in any given endeavor and asking myself one simple question: if I knew then what I know now, would I have started this in the first place?

If the answer is no, I immediately try to end whatever I’m doing. If it’s a bad project I got suckered into because I was too nice, I’ll see if I can find someone else who’s more eager and I enlist the help of the person who suckered me into it in the first place. If it’s a person that’s bad for my life, I just stop calling them. If it’s a personal project, I’ll put it away and call it done.

Knowing what I know now, I definitely would have started writing INFP Blog.

Now comes the fun part, figuring out what’s next. That’s the next post.

Special is as special does

Corin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 05:18:50 +0000

I’m special. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator told me so. As an INFP, I’m 1-5% of the total population. On the days I want to be more special, I quote the 1% number from Keirsey’s Please Understand Me instead of the 5% number from CAPT.org. Luckily, I don’t believe everything I read.

Being 1-5% just makes me different not special. I haven’t done anything particularly special. As an INFP, I’m aware of our need to feel special in a world that just recognizes us as different. However, instead of doing things that make me feel special, I waste time telling people I’m special in various subtle ways like quoting Myers-Briggs stats. It’s like being the guy who tells you he’s going to be famous and then has to move back in with parents because he couldn’t find a job that wasn’t beneath his sense of specialness.

People admire Olympic athletes and entrepreneurs for a reason. People don’t admire the natural inborn talent. We’ve all heard stories about the valedictorian that ends up working at a bookstore or the kooky genius that never made it out of his parent’s house. We admire Olympic athletes and entrepreneurs because they’ve proved it. They dedicated years to athletic training or risked everything to invest in their company. These people become recognized as special because they’ve done something special.

INFPs sometimes confuse different with special. Mensa estimates that 2% of the population has a genius level IQ. Being born with a genius level IQ makes you different. Doing something special is what differentiates a patent clerk who gave us the Theory of Relativity from Chris Langan, a bouncer in Long Island with a 210 IQ. Einstein managed to do something with his genius.

Unfortunately, I wasted so much time trying to convince people that different meant special. I became very subtle at telling people I was special. I was vocal about disliking the popular. I derided the mundane. I mean, if I didn’t like what everyone else liked then that must make me special.

On top of the list of things I disliked was small talk. Everyone talks about the weather, and I wanted to be above that. Kin Hubbard, an early 1900′s cartoonist once said, “Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.” I was that nine out of ten people. I wondered why people didn’t like me. Apparently, people like people who take action and talk to them instead of being in some corner.

My other subtle way of telling people I was special was by showing off my esoterica. Usually, this took the form of slipping specialized knowledge into conversations. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to slip anything from my encyclopedic recall of Dungeons & Dragons into a conversation with people talking about the weather. As I grew older, my esoterica became more sophisticated. I discovered it was just as hard slipping Rimbaud, Objectivism, Joel-Peter Witkin or whatever I learned that I thought was cool into a conversation about weather.

After years of being different, I embraced my differences as a badge to prove that I was special. Other people didn’t think like me so I must be special. I thought I had higher standards than other people so I must be special. I thought I had some deeper understanding of the universe that no one else could see so I must be special. I convinced myself that I so special that only other special people would be able to recognize my specialness. I started an exclusive club called “my good friends” and we didn’t talk about the weather.

What I couldn’t get was that people didn’t want to join my club. People are attracted to the special, so why weren’t people seeking to be my friend. I was always the one wanting to be friends with someone else. Even worse was that my good friends would leave my club for no reason. With a club based on exclusivity, if others don’t envy that exclusivity, you’re just a bunch a nerds hanging around not talking about the weather. What didn’t I realized was that I wasn’t doing anything special. I was just being different.

Maybe the world is just screwed up for not valuing the different. It’s them not me. Hundreds of thousands of years of biology have shown that different gets you killed. The black wolf stands out against the snow and scares off game. Basically, being different is inherently selfish. Being different doesn’t benefit anyone until you do something special.

So how is winning an Olympic medal not a selfish endeavor? Because in doing so, the athletes remind us that everyone has the potential to do great things and that inborn talent isn’t the only factor. I’m never going to be an Olympic athlete, but being reminded that if I get off my ass I might do something great makes me feel special. It’s not disempowering because it reminds me that I control my destiny. On the other hand, someone telling me I’m sheep for liking what everyone else likes and thinking what everyone else thinks , doesn’t benefit me, doesn’t make me feel special.

INFPs seem to forget that being special requires other people to acknowledge it. People recognize actions. They recognize me when I do something, not when I am something. Unless I do something special, the world has no reason to recognize that I am special. Maybe the answer is some zen approach where I just have to accept myself as special separate from the outside world. However, I always end up with a bunch of INFPs telling me how they’ve managed to do it and wanting to be acknowledge for letting go of the need to be acknowledged.

The problem with telling people you’re special no matter how subtly is that you are telling yourself at the same time. When someone tells us that they’re special, we’d like them to prove it by doing something we recognize as special. When tell ourselves that were special, eventually we’re going to have to prove it or else we feel like a fraud. As INFPs, we tell ourselves most our lives that we’re special, but we never seem to get around to doing anything to prove it. Each day, we don’t prove what we tell ourselves, our self-esteem sinks a little lower.

INFPs have a greater need feel special than other MBTI types. That’s not a bad thing. It’s our nature. Fighting our nature just causes unhappiness. However, INFPs focus on the wrong thing. INFPs want to BE special when what we need is to FEEL special. Being special and feeling special are two completely different things.

INFPs instinctively understand this need to feel special and that’s why we’re desperate to connect to another person. INFPs feel that life would be better if we had that special someone because it only takes one other person to make us feel special. Unfortunately, we forget that feeling special doesn’t actually require us to move to the world. We just have to connect to another person. So all the people I use to exclude for talking about the weather was one less person who could have connected with me.

Accepting that I needed people was a risky prospect because I had been so invested in that me vs them mindset. For the longest time, I protected myself with reciprocal relationships. I call you. You call me back. I don’t cancel at the last minute. You don’t cancel at the last minute. I’ve never known a healthy relationship built on the expectation of reciprocation. That’s probably why those relationships never went anywhere.

I think INFPs would be happier if we focused on feeling special instead to trying to prove to ourselves that we are special by virtue of being different. I discovered a motivational speaker named Brian Tracy who introduced to me to concept of indirect effort. If you want to be admired, then admire someone. If you want to be feel special, make someone feel special. What’s great about making someone feel special is that we’re doing something that benefits someone other than just ourselves.

Sometimes, making another person feel special can be as simple as telling them they’re special. It’s easy, but not many people do it. And the best thing about telling someone they’re special is that they rarely ask you to prove it.

Five Stages of INFP

Corin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:14:34 +0000

As INFPs, we live in an internal dream world of our ideals where everything exists the way we think it should be. When reality forces us to wake up, it feels a little like dying.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying, wrote that people experience five stages of grief when they are confronted with significant loss like receiving news of terminal illness. As the real world begins crowding into the INFPs idealized world, INFPs realize that we have to let go of the our idealize version of the world. In doing so, we move back and forth through the stages until we wake up.

Stage 1: Denial

“If I can’t make a living doing what I love then I’d rather be dead.”

The denial stage manifests as avoidance of facts. Denial is wanting the Reward without knowing the Rules. Denial is wishful dreaming while refusing to look at how those dreams manifest.

INFPs in denial believe that writing their first book will somehow automagically translate to being able to eat and pay rent as a writer through some series of serendipity. INFPs in denial believe that if the right person was in their life then everything will work out.

INFPs in denial know their desired Reward such as “I want to write books for a living” but can’t answer questions about the Rules such as “do you know how much an average Times bestselling author makes?” They don’t want to know the answer because the answer brings them closer to waking up.

The denial stage can only exist if the INFP lives in a protected environment such as living at home or at college on their parent’s income. I don’t know any INFPs who work two jobs to pay to college part time that are still in the denial phase. INFPs start moving out of denial phase about 6 months after they started paying rent and stopped doing laundry at their parent’s house.

Stage 2: Anger

“I think the world is too materialistic.”

The anger stage manifests as placing blame. It’s the world’s ideals that are screwed up. INFPs believe that the world is too shallow, materialistic and uncaring to recognize the awesomeness of the INFP’s individuality. INFPs in the anger stage have few friends and work at jobs they feel is beneath their natural talent. Bad relationships are always about the INFP getting mistreated in some way. It’s never the INFPs fault for choosing crappy people for relationships.

The Anger stage last as until the INFP gets tired of feeling alone and disconnected. Angry people make poor friends because it’s always going to be everyone else’s fault. I find that most Angry INFPs are lonely INFPs.

The Anger stage stops when the entitlement mentality stops. Just because an INFP feels that they’re special or talented doesn’t obligate anyone else to recognize this. INFPs moving from the Anger stage realize that they’re not entitled to their Rewards and have follow the Rules for those Rewards like everyone else.

Stage 3: Bargaining

“I don’t need a fancy house or money to be happy.”

The bargaining stage manifests as settling. I don’t think any INFP would turn down the keys from someone who just drove a truckload of money to their front doorstep. INFPs are dreamers. We have an ideal of what our perfect world would be like. However, trying to achieve that ideal involves risk. Our grand plans might fail. So we settle for the safer route. Bargaining stage is about eschewing those things the INFP doesn’t need instead of fully committing to the things they really want.

Bargaining stage is about reaching contentment, not fulfillment. INFPs bargain with themselves by trying to figure out their minimum standard for happiness. Bargaining minimizes being hurt. INFPs tell themselves that even though they didn’t get what they wanted, at least they got what they needed.

Bargaining stops when they INFPs re-evaluate their life. They see not being unhappy isn’t the same as being happy.

Stage 4: Depression

“I don’t care about those things.”

The depression stage manifests as inaction. Depression occurs when a person feels that the things they value in life are beyond their control of achieving. That’s why I keep reiterating that a person’s level of happiness is directly related to the amount of control we feel we have in our lives. If an INFP feels that finding the right person is luck then meaningful relationships is beyond their control. Eventually, they give up by not taking any actions to form relationships.

The INFPs in the depression stage have had repeated bad outcomes which leads to learned helplessness. Their experience has taught them that no matter what they’ve tried to achieve personal happiness, it never works out because of other people, the situation, the way the world is and other external factors beyond their control.

It should be noted that the depression stage doesn’t always manifest itself with classic symptoms of emotional depression or dysthymia (chronic low-grade depression or moodiness). INFP idealism can turn the depression stage into martyrdom. INFPs don’t see it as not taking action towards happiness. They see it as surviving despite the fact that the rules of the world are not in their favor. They are proud of the fact that they can persevere by continuing to do what they’ve always done. They’ve become very successful at not achieving their personal success.

The depression stage ends when the INFP accepts full responsibility for all the crappy people and situations in their life.

Stage 5: Acceptance

~~“It’s my fault.”~~ “I’m responsible.”

The acceptance stage manifests as accepting personal responsibility. Saying ~~“it’s all my fault”~~ “I’m responsible” takes the control from the external and gives it back to the INFP. We accept that all outcomes come from our actions.

Acceptance is recognizing that we never fail, we get bad outcomes. We keep changing our actions until we get the outcome we want. Waking up isn’t about letting go of our dreams. It’s about wiping the sleep from our eyes and making those dreams real.

Change made on: April 29, 2010

I changed “It’s my fault” to “I’m responsible”. Something Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker said, made me want to change this. The word fault denotes blame and is always past focused. The past cannot be changed. Saying “I’m responsible” is future focused because from this point forward we accept that we are in charge of our lives.

My favorite question is: so what?

Corin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:32:21 +0000

I waited a year before taking the time to design my blog. The first iteration took me 15 minutes to throw together from a template I found. This version, I spent roughly 60 hours designing and coding over the last 2 weeks. Even before I started design, my two questions were “so what?” followed by “who cares?”.

Amanda Linehan, an INFP who writes a self awareness blog, Look Far, wrote about asking the right questions. For me, “So what?” and “Who cares?” are my most important questions. They give me perspective. They moderate my need for validation. “So what” reminds me that even though I think I’m unique and special, the universe is under no obligation to acknowledge this in anyway.

INFP Blog is my third blog. The first two failed. I forgot that the fundamental objective of any blog is building a relationship with your reader. Anyone who says that they write blogs for themselves needs reminding that if a person wants to write something no one reads, it’s easier to keep a diary under the bed. Pen and paper have smaller learning curves than WordPress or Blogspot.

My first two blogs looked cool. I spent weeks with the design. My objective was to express myself by creating something that reflected me. If I asked myself “so what” at the start, I could have saved myself the trouble. After all the hours designing and coding those first blogs, no one read them. After the launch, I was too burnt out and too disappointed to get to the real work of building relationships.

Those failed blogs represent a bigger picture of how I formed relationships in my real life. I thought that if learned something really well and expressed myself with it, I’d be cool and people would be naturally be attracted. My self-worth would be validated by the awesomeness of my skills. Yeah, that didn’t work.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned about relationships. People don’t like us for who we are. For the most part, few really know who we are. And perhaps since we’re INFPs, most never will. People like us because of who they are when they’re around us.

A common complaint on INFP forums is how INFPs are shy and a little bit lonely because we find it difficult to meet people with whom we connect. So instead, INFPs focus on self-development. However, if our goal is finding meaningful relationships, why are we so focused on something we aren’t going to readily share with someone we don’t already know?

INFPs learn and improve on skills and knowledge that make us unique whether it’s Tarot, Vogon poetry, speaking Elvish or the MBTI. We get awesome at these skills and wouldn’t mind being recognized by the like-minded for the time and energy spent. However, the only people who recognize the dedication are others with the same interest who also spent time and energy and would also like to be recognized for their awesomeness. For me, mutual back patting has never been a solid foundation to build meaningful relationships. As for the ones who aren’t like-minded, they don’t care if we know the meaning of moons in certain Houses or about Risings and Cusps. People only care what we know once they know that we care.

The question of “so what?” takes me outside of my head. So I redesign my blog, lots of people redesign their blogs every day. What makes me doing it so special? My answer was nothing. This leads to better questions:

Will my traffic increase because I redesigned?
Nope. I have 12 years of web experience to know that’s untrue.

Will it make me feel better if the site looks prettier?
A little. I like shiny.

Will it make me feel better if the site is pretty and no one reads my site?
No

Is the reason for creating the site to make myself feel better?
No.

So what’s a good reason to spend all this effort redesigning if feeling better was the reason for the site in the first place?
Because I can’t find anything. Whenever I want to link to an old post, I have to go digging for it. If I have this much problem navigating my site, it’s probably worse for someone else.

These are the same questions that went through my head a year ago when I first created the site. I couldn’t find a good reason to spend hours on design so I put up something simple and focused on writing and building relationships instead. Now that I have a modest readership, I redesigned for usefulness to improve relationships. People are attracted to usefulness.

Yes, I could have redesigned to feel better. INFPs do that all the time. We do things to make ourselves feel better, but feeling better usually isn’t the primary purpose. Feeling better is the consolation prize so we aren’t too hurt if we fail at our primary goal. Feeling better is 2nd place. INFPs spend a lot of time and energy trying to reach 2nd place instead of focusing on our primary goals.

I could have redesigned to just express myself. Expressing for oneself is necessary and essential for INFPs. However, when we do something that only benefits ourselves, no one else cares. Doing things to make ourselves feel better falls under the same category because it only benefits us. Why should anyone else care?

Here’s a secret. Even though the new design is shiny, it’s not my preferred design style. However, the navigation is cleaner. Using serif fonts and increasing the white space make long text easier to read. Also the new layout, lets me scale the the site into a resource. I have a space for book recommendations that a reader asked for 3 months ago. In short, it’s more useful. Useful builds relationships.