This is wild.
Let me back up a moment. I’ve been fascinated with the MBTI — Meyers Briggs Temperament Indicator — since I learned about it in the early 90s. I’ve had more people go glassy-eyed on me as I carry on about dominant, axillary, tertiary and inferior preferences, desperate for others to see the amazing, complex, dynamic pattern I see when I look at those four letters that indicate one’s personality preferences than the economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller." I love this stuff!
Okay, so I’m weird.
Here’s the thing that’s got me so excited tonight that I went from falling-over tired to wide awake with excitement. I should know by now never to check Joe’s blog just before I go to bed. He makes me think and can induce insomnia faster than a Venti Chai Cream Frappuccino. But sometimes I’m a slow learner, so I checked. He posted his indicator results from this MBTI website I’ve not heard of before. He’s an INFJ. Now, that’s the personality type I’ve come to call my own for the last four years, so I thought it rather cool that we shared it.
However, I also realize that the last couple of years I’ve been "testing" as an INFP. Most of these are those fun little quizilla things that are way too short to have any real value or meaning. They’re just fun ways to say, "Look! I’m like Dumbledore." or whatever. But I also began to recognize a growing preference in my life to live more spontaneously, or at least less structured. So I knew I’ve been shifting preferences, but I didn’t realize it was enough to truly throw me into a different MBTI type.
Turns out it is. The crazy thing is, at least to me, is that I not only scored solidly on the "P" side (though it does seem to be balanced with the "J", which is good; balance is what you want to achieve, I’m told) but when I read the profile for an INFP I see myself completely. Almost as if I’m seeing myself for the first time, or first time in a long time. This is really me. The me I am inside. The me I’ve been afraid for anyone to see since I was a small child.
INFPs never seem to lose their sense of wonder. One might say they see life through rose-colored glasses. It’s as though they live at the edge of a looking-glass world where mundane objects come to life, where flora and fauna take on near-human qualities.
INFP children often exhibit this in a ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ fashion, switching from reality to fantasy and back again. With few exceptions, it is the NF child who readily develops imaginary playmates (as with Anne of Green Gables’s "bookcase girlfriend"–her own reflection)…
Lord have mercy. If that’s not me I don’t know what is. As an aside, I have to say I love the idea of having more in common with Anne of Green Gables than red hair. I love her drama queen ways and see a lot of myself in her passion and imagination. As a child everything was fodder for my imagination. Everything had life and meaning and mystery and I saw it all come alive and dance for me while everyone else just saw "stuff." I ran around with Jesus as a playmate and Will Robinson as a brother.
I don’t think I ever lost the wonder of life but I learned to bury it deep within the older I got. Most people, I’ve learned, don’t see the wonder of life with such awe as I do. I was often teased, laughed at, made fun of and otherwise tortured for my way of viewing the world. So I learned to hide the awe, the Lu-in-Wonderland of the real me in favor of the sensing-thinking mentality that so dominates our world. I can fake that pretty well, amazingly enough. I thought one particular sentence in the profile was incredibly helpful in my understanding of this "gift": "INFPs can even masquerade in their ESTJ business suit, but not without expending considerable energy." Surprisingly very true. I can. To the point that I sometimes questioned if my awe and wonder were really me, or just parts of someone else that I’d stolen because I secretly thought they were cool. But it really does suck the energy right out of me.
For so long I tried to be who I thought everyone else wanted and expected me to be that I lost touch with who I really am. My re-commitment to Jesus in 1993 and my time at Mosaic seemed to bring me back in touch with that wonder and awe, and slowly I began embrace who I really am. I think that shows in the shifts of my MBTI results over time: INTJ to INFJ to…. now INFP. The last last three years in particular have been incredibly significant in finally rediscovering and reconnecting with my true self.
No "profile" or indicator result can truly define all that a person is. There’s so much more to me than my personality preferences; things like my strengths, passions, experiences and spiritual gifts. Yet reading this profile tonight I felt like God was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "This is kinda cool, isn’t it. This is a picture of who I created you to be; who you were early on. Look how far you’ve come: full-circle. Not changing, just maturing into who I made you to be."
Who knew that when I took this thing tonight with no other motivation than to have a little bit of fun and prove that Joe and I are "special" together (we are!) that God would take the opportunity to remind me of the wonder and awe of life in all it’s seemingly random craziness.
Never thought you were weird – just a very good friend.
You were just jealous that you were not in the ENTP crazy group. You did have a tendency to click mirrors when you drove on the right side. Glad to see you are doing great.
Dave & Karla
Interesting. I never thought about the Myers-Briggs tracking a person’s changes.
I have some problems with this at the moment. Do I want to be what God wants me to be? If I let him change me, is that purely brainwashing? It’s an amazingly sensitive and twitchy thing for me, as I’ve had to hold so firmly to myself for all these years against all the attackers. God has the advantage of me. On my good days I know that his desire is beneficent, that if he wanted me to be a sheep in the army he could very easily accomlish that.
Thanks for writing about your changes.
Dave — oh my goodness!!! Soooo good to see you here. Give my love to Karla. Ya’ll are AWESOME. —But nooooo, I don’t think I’m jealous of you crazy ENTPs. Ya’ll are wild.
Larry — Don’t think about as God radically altering you or changing you into something you don’t want to be. He’s already changed your spiritual DNA the moment you committed your life to Him and He created you — everything about you, including your personality and strengths — just as He wanted you to be when He formed you in your mother’s womb. Finally, He would never do something that you don’t want done. That’s just not His nature. But then, you already experienced that part. What He wants is to mature you into who you already are. If that makes sense. It’s like taking a baby and maturing him into a 5 year-old, and then into a 10 year-old, and then into an adult. Sure, there is disciplines that must be learned and bad habits or thought patterns that need to jettisoned but all of that is like stripping paint off an old piece of furniture so it can be restored to its true glory. That’s what God wants to do. It’s a maturing of who you already are, not a changing of who you are altogether.
Does that make sense?
Granted, if you are really comfortable with that old chipping layer of paint it would be scary to have someone come at you with sandpaper. — Thankfully God’s hands don’t feel like that! — And that’s where the trust comes in…. you like how I’m weaving all my posts back into each other in this comment? š …at some point you’ll have to trust Him that He doesn’t want to make you into someone else. And I think that may only come when you’re so sick of living like you are that you’re willing to do anything to live differently. Kinda like an addict hitting rock bottom…
Make sense?
Yes, Lu, you do make sense… you drama queen, you.
Intellectually, rationally, I know you’re right. There are many examples of proof that God isn’t interested in levelling the property and rebuilding to suit modern taste. My emotions lag way behind my intellect, however; God touches these things with the lightest feather touch and it feels like a jackhammer to me… and I just put my head down and bolt. Automatic self-protection.
So, he’ll wait until I’m too tired to move, and then level the place. The situation isn’t helped by how I started in desperation. Well, desperation had its place but now we seem to be going over some of those older decisions and working on changing them from the desperate cry of “Save me before I fall” to “I’ll give you permission to change this.” Or something. Like we’re sitting down at the table, face to face, discussing what needs to be done, and God actually listens to me. Naturally, this is very hard for me to believe.
I followed the link, and according to it I’m INFP. The I part is no surprise; I’m 100% on that. The other scales were less extreme, and I could easily have been INFJ as the split is 42/58. As I read the descriptions the INFJ fit better than INFP in some areas. I believe I came out as INFP when I took the full MBTI in 1981 but I don’t have the papers here.
The question is: am I truly INFP? Or is that the result of a lifetime’s iron-handed training in self-defensive behavior? In the world of Uru, the on-line game, I’m one of the best-known… party organizers and DJs. Kind of an odd position for an introvert…
And then you and I are both INFP at the moment. You’re far more outgoing than I, although you do have the homebody tendency at times. Maybe that’s what you get when you’re a red-haired INFP. š
A correction: I misread the chart. I’m pretty solidly in the P camp (89%). It’s the thinking/feeling continuum where I’m nearer the middle, with 58% F. I still resonate with the INFJ description.
MBTI is a good tool. At work we’ve been doing “Now Discover Your Strengths” – a book that (used to, at least) include a special code to take an online assessment. The concept is that businesses (and maybe Christians?) for years have been concentrating on finding people’s weaknesses and trying to bring those areas up to good/competent/at least not horrible. And, per the authors, that’s all wrong. You want to use the things that people do best and spend time/effort/money on making those aspects better. Why strive to be fair in an area where the same amount of effort could make someone excellent in an area where they were already strong?
OK, I know that’s missing a bit the point of Truefaced and a lot of what Manning writes about, but the concept meshes somewhat – maybe God isn’t so hung up on what you struggle with (He knows that you would – that knit in my mother’s womb thing) but is more saddened when you spend time trying to win small battles in a war He’s already won for us!
At any rate, back to NDYS – there are about 50 strenghts that have been identified and it was an amazing relevation that there was a name for what I enjoy so much (and apparently do well). And it goes a long way in understanding why some others don’t get the same kick out of doing some of the things that come so easy to me (and vice versa, of course). NDYS is a good read – even if not theologically based and makes a good compliment (not replacement) for MTBI…