[NF] NF's, would you call yourself happy?

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Sure, different strokes...

I'm not religious at all but I am spiritual in the sense of wondering about something larger than the confines of human experience and understanding.

I didn't come to this through a religious source or a self-help book.

I felt a real gap in the way I was experiencing the world around me. I'm not sure if ENFPs, driven as we are by our Ne, would necessarily find it easier to live in the moment. The possibilities always seem so much more pressing and exciting. Driven by impulse, as we are, isn't the same as living in the present.

I don't want to lose the connection with Ne either - those myriad possibilities are still an essential part of who I am. I also don't want to look back at my life and feel like I missed it while I was planning it.

An example is, on this last vacation in a fabulous new country, I was sitting at lunch with a very close friend and travel companion, planning our next vacation and had at least 5 possible countries I wanted to visit and she had her own list. It was so much fun talking about those possibilities. At the same time, I realized I just wanted to just soak in and enjoy where I was. Once I realized that, I started to notice and experience more fully how wonderful the food was and the sheer beauty of the place...I think I felt connected to the stereotypical ENFP romantic vision of life at that moment.

I've realized that a good balance is always having the next trip planned but when I'm on a trip or having dinner with someone or even a telephone conversation, I'm concentrating on just that. Sometimes it's just allowing physical sensations to take over. Getting in touch with Se is very satisfying. I feel a real difference when I can do that. That feeling that takes over for brief moments at a time that everything is right with the world...that's happiness for me.

i know what you mean. in thinking about it more, i guess i like to catch up and plan ahead, then i can relax in the moment. but i can't just relax in the moment until i'm sort-of organized in the past and the future. some people can just live in the moment and let things fall into place. that's not really me, but i admire it. i think it's more the p types that can do this.

 

[cascadeco]

Way to go fellow INFJs who feel there are too many dimensions to the word "happy." We truly are probably unhappy because we refuse to look at things in a simple, straight-forward manner.

Well, honestly, when I first read the OP I thought it was ridiculous. I thought to myself, no one is happy 100% of the time. Happiness, like any emotion, is transient, and will come and go. So on a day-to-day basis, things might flux rapidly. In a larger context, I look at these things as an overall phase/'level' -- i.e. even though my day-to-day might fluctuate, overall, the average happiness level over a span of say 60 days, might be higher than it was 6 years ago, or it might be lower than it was 10 years ago, etc.

Of course too there's the element of part of it boiling down to choice (well, at least I believe that to be true - maybe not of everyone, but at least of myself) - we can choose how to view things and how to react to things, and we can choose, at least partly, our own level of happiness. Because how we choose to perceive the world and events has a direct bearing on our emotional state.

Am I happy? Yes, no, never, and always.

Always contextual.

 

[lost verses]

LOL @ the biggest percentage in the poll being unhappy INFPs.

It's frustrating...because I feel that my requirements for happiness are so little, and yet I am always cut off from attaining them. If I was with someone who I am in love with, and who simultaneously is my buddy, I'd be golden, I'd be set. But they always seem to allude me.