[MBTI General] Having a type and knowing how to use it

[Purple INFJ]

Hello everyone:

So I'd like to discuss the difference between having a type and knowing how to use it.

You may have a car, and yet not know how to drive it. You can have a house, and not know how to care for it. And having plants doesn't mean you'll know how to give them the best treatment possible.

I think something similar happens in the realm of MBTi. Just because you have a particular type doesn't mean you know how to harness that and capitalize on it.

As an INFJ, I struggled with procrastination, disorganization, absent-mindedness, and time-management for years. While all 4 are still things I need to be cautious with, I've been learning to deal with them more effectively. And the interesting thing is that it wasn't all that hard!!! It would be nice to turn back time and use this knowledge I've gained to do things differently, but I can't do that.

Basically, it's come down to making lists, annotating stuff in a cellphone calendar, and using alarms. While this is just the beginning of a new era in my life, I think I won't struggle as severely as I used to, and have good reason to kook forward to what I coud achieve down the road.

I think it partly comes down to avoiding over-reliance on your Inferior function, and using the 3 above it to compensate for it as much as possible. The Inferior is still key, however, to bolstering the Dominant and thus firing up your type's processing, so it's important that you learn how to light up your Inferior and thus make your type productive.

I'd say one reason the lists work for me is because they allow me to have stuff to focus on specifically, which gets my Ni drive going.

So, what do you guys and gals think? Did you have a phase in your life when you could look back and say (if I could use what I've learned about my tyoe for back then)? Have you find interesting ways to light up your Inferior and compensate for it's weaknesses using your top 3 preferred functions?

 

[IndigoViolet11]

This is a post I made a day or two before when I talked quite indirectly on how other functions will strengthen the dominant and the auxiliary, and here is the link.

Everything is a learning process. No matter which function we are having advantage on, there seem to be other areas that we ourselves are handicapped. Take me as an example, while I have a side where my decisiveness dominates, it was not apparent at all in the eyes of the others who knew me in person. Different from here, I won't be carrying my INFJ/INTP label out in the street nor even got much chance to talk much about how functions and personalities relate for example. In fact, I don't even see any of them around me are skilled enough nor have the motivation to care anyways - everybody almost around me, either we are working, busying, alone, and heck, no one here almost, know how to speak english. Some of the people knew how to speak english, but to a lot of them the language remains a problem.

When I found out how much my "main" dominates, I was shocked by how much that function dominates. While my rational thinking is pretty good, my dominating function dominates much much more than my thinking does, to the point that it is extremely overpowering, and all along the way, I relied on it so much without realizing that at all - I feel first before I think, but what I threw out outwardly to others is not mainly feelings, even though deep down inside I knew which one came first, without any known theory before I get into mbti to support my own process. But because I did very good in my reasoning, and frequently been commented a reasonable person and a rational thinker, no one knew the dominant side of me. In fact I pick up patterns quite well, especially the abstract side of things. I kept the dominant part of me to myself.

 

[chado]

im actualy not sure how to use my type,tho iv leartned to use my creativity as an enfp or infp not sure it which one but i feel like im realy imaginitive,and now i can use my creativity to my advantage,