[ENFP] ENFP (dis)satisfaction

[skylights]

so i've been feeling what pretty much amounts to existential boredom lately - my new relationship kept me all geared up for quite a few months but it's just not enough anymore, i trust it too much to get freaked out enough by it to satisfy my crazy need for Ne stimulation - and i've been thinking about satisfaction, and i've hit this realization that unless i'm doing something really

BIG

i am essentially unsatisfied...

the problem being, ideally i want to be at THE highest level of importance i can get to... not status-wise but big-picture-wise... i want to be global, working at a universal, world level...

but i'm not really sure how i can go about achieving this... i still haven't pursued a higher-ed career path because everything seems so dang small... i want to open up and get connected, not narrow down... for example i would love to be a doctor, but i want to help change healthcare globally, not just with one person a day... and even then if i think about public health, it's still not BIG enough...

i mean, this life, this is It, i don't want to just do little stuff all life long, i want to be at the center of the movements of the universe... i want to dig as far as i possibly can...

ENFPs do you resonate with me?

have you figured out any way to address this?

 

[Chloe]

I relate 100000%. Just like reading my own word. Though, i am satisfied because I accepted that there will be a lot of time until I do something "big". Whenever I am bored I find something new to learn and practice. The possibilities are endless, I am so excited about unrevealed horizons... economics is my new love.. I want to spend few years catching up on others.. and be entrepreneur one day

until then... I will daydream.


P.S. When I was in medical school I was considering public health after i finish because it was logical move, given my global orientation. i couldnt do 1-on-1 with patients over and over again for more than few months... helping 1 person doesnt make changes that I want to do.

So, maybe.. i dont know how it is in the States, but pursuing a career in Public health etc sectors.. could be good choice.. for you..i understand that even reforming public health isn't "big" enough, because i would be bored after max 2 years of that job


maybe you would be interested in change leadership or something like that ? there are som PhD/MS programmes in the states that I saw and look really cool.




Just realization I had NOW: the more I pair my ambitions and hunger with my values - the more I am satisfied with "SMALL" things. Because if you pursue so much global things you lose track that you are making daily changes and they MATTER.

 

[SilkRoad]

Sorry for butting in (I seem to be doing this a lot lately with threads not about my type...) but because ENFPs have got all that big beautiful Ne coming up with wild, crazy ideas...you often need someone more grounded and practical to actualize it, no? (like you said, you're not sure how to achieve it, yet...)

Your new guy is an SJ, no? Perhaps he can help!

I am interested in the responses to this thread too

 

[Qlip]

I do love the excitement of doing something big. I think what I utimately look for in my day to day activities is the prospect of UNLIMITED POTENTIAL, and when I find the limit, I get discouraged. It doesn't necessarily have to be global for me, but I have to have the opportunity to be the best at something, to be able to do everything associated with that particular obsession.

This is one reason I don't do martial arts anymore, because I haven't found one that I'm not limited by my physical requirements. Lately I've been wanting to take dance classes, but I haven't, and part of that has to do with that I can't think of any way dancing is going to take me to that UNLIMITED POTENTIAL level, no matter how much I'd enjoy it. It's a very limiting point of view. I've decided to try realize the potential of the moment instead of focusing on the long term. I think the only times I've really felt real happiness is when I'm totally in the flow of life. It trunmps the excitement of the possibility of future.

 

[21%]

Wow this thread is bursting with Ne energy

 

[ilovelurking]

Maybe Network Marketing is your thing.

ENFPs are known to know many people within a 300km radius... (I coughed-up that number without thinking...) But really! Who do you know that knows somebody who does something that can do more something to somebody who also knows somebody who can....and it goes on and on.

 

[Qlip]

Maybe Network Marketing is your thing.

ENFPs are known to know many people within a 300km radius... (I coughed-up that number without thinking...) But really! Who do you know that knows somebody who does something that can do more something to somebody who also knows somebody who can....and it goes on and on.

I'm maybe speaking only for myself here, it's not really a competition thing. It's not about knowing that you're better than somebody, it's about being able to fully realize a role or a concept, taking it to its boundaries.

 

[skylights]

Sorry for butting in (I seem to be doing this a lot lately with threads not about my type...) but because ENFPs have got all that big beautiful Ne coming up with wild, crazy ideas...you often need someone more grounded and practical to actualize it, no? (like you said, you're not sure how to achieve it, yet...)

Your new guy is an SJ, no? Perhaps he can help!

I am interested in the responses to this thread too

i like you butting in! i like you. plus after all, Ne = the more ideas/people/things, the better

and good idea

i think he is... as of now i'm pretty sure he's ExFJ at least. sometimes he confuses me whether he's Si or not. i think so. but then he he seems pretty Si most of the time. but then has these weird foreseeings that seem all Ni and i get confuzed.

 

[ilovelurking]

I'm maybe speaking only for myself here, it's not really a competition thing. It's not about knowing that you're better than somebody, it's about being able to fully realize a role or a concept, taking it to its boundaries.

It doesn't have to be a competition if you choose not to compete. You're your own 'boss' so you get to choose how you like it.

Also, it is great place for everyone to allow their potential to shine with helping other people realise their own.

 

[SubtleFighter]

I'm not an ENFP, but this really resonates with me. That's been an issue with me for years now--I really want to make a major impact on everything, not just work within the system but actually change the system. And yet it's hard to come up with like one job position, for instance, that would allow me to make all the changes I'd want to make. And I've tried convincing myself that I'll be okay with only making a difference in a little way (like only the people around me in my area or that I know personally), but the truth is that I'm not okay with that. I just sense this need to try to change things in a mega-way. I'm studying to be an English teacher right now, but I know this will only be a temporary job. I just can't see myself teaching the five-paragraph essay for the rest of my life and being happy with that *shudders*

I'm beginning to think that instead of one job position being the answer to this need to want to make a big impact, the answer is probably closer to addressing each issue individually. Like seeing what should be changed in health care and addressing that specifically, and then looking at what should be changed in education specifically and addressing that, and keep going down the list.

Since you asked if anyone has any ideas for addressing this, I hope it's okay if I make a suggestion as to how you could try to achieve some of these aspirations. This is just something that has worked for me over the years, and maybe it can help you:

--Define the end-goal as specifically as possible.

Ex: I'm currently on a mission to change the way a specific disorder is handled in the medical field, and my goal is to have the treatment that has been shown to work (through many studies) be known by everyday doctors so that it gets passed on to the patients who need it. (Note: I know that you're talking about something bigger than this, but this can work for many, many different things, and I also believe that breaking it into smaller goals helps it to be achievable)

--Work backwards. What would have to come right before this in order for this to happen?

Ex. 1) The doctors would have to be made aware of this treatment and be convinced that it works, 2) the doctors would have to be made aware of what this disorder really entails and how devastating it can actually be to take it seriously

--Keep working backwards. What would have to come right before this in order for it to happen?

Ex. The doctors would need to be told the truth about this disorder, how devastating it is, and how to treat it by people who they trust and respect the opinions of.

And then it keeps going back to who would tell them (ex. their colleagues, medical teachers, a whole crap load of patients with the disorder, etc), and it keeps going on until you have a big plan as to how you can effect the change you want to see, and you know what you can do now in order to get the ball moving.


This is just a suggestion, but I hope it helps.

 

[William K]

This might not apply directly but to me it's like the saying that goes "If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing well"

There are 2 value judgments that need to be made here
1) Figuring out what is "worth doing" for you
2) Figuring out how to measure if you're "doing well"

For question 1, there's a high probability that the "worth doing" here is not just about what profit we make but rather whether we feel that we are making a difference with what we are doing. You mentioned in your OP that you are interested in healthcare which is not a minor investment of time as a career. Which part of healthcare would be the one that you think will give you the most satisfaction based on the effort you put in? What sort of global impact do you wish to achieve? Cure a disease such as cancer? Make healthcare more affordable?
As was suggested by SubtleFighter, start from your end-goal(s) and work backwards. If you have a rough outline of what you need to do to achieve your end-goal, then you can better judge if it will be "worth doing".

Question 2 is more of a challenge for Idealists like us who tend to aim for such high, lofty goals that we get demotivated when we fall short. Again, work backwards from your big goal and divide it into sub-goals in smaller time-frames that are achievable so that you can at least see yourself as successfully working towards your dream. It's great to have a dream of Solving the world's hunger problem, for example, but we need to have some practical milestones and ways to measure if we are actually going anywhere. Besides, most of the BIG problems can't be solved by a single person anyway so why put all the burden on just your shoulders? Figure out how and how much you can contribute to solving the whole puzzle.
I have "What I feel is convenient enough is the key" written on the whiteboard of my cubicle. It's not really about coming up with the perfect solution. It's about coming up with one that works well enough and most importantly, be practical in terms of things such as cost, implementation, etc.

Good luck in finding your spot in the Universe

 

[pinkgraffiti]

so i've been feeling what pretty much amounts to existential boredom lately - my new relationship kept me all geared up for quite a few months but it's just not enough anymore, i trust it too much to get freaked out enough by it to satisfy my crazy need for Ne stimulation - and i've been thinking about satisfaction, and i've hit this realization that unless i'm doing something really

BIG

i am essentially unsatisfied...

the problem being, ideally i want to be at THE highest level of importance i can get to... not status-wise but big-picture-wise... i want to be global, working at a universal, world level...

but i'm not really sure how i can go about achieving this... i still haven't pursued a higher-ed career path because everything seems so dang small... i want to open up and get connected, not narrow down... for example i would love to be a doctor, but i want to help change healthcare globally, not just with one person a day... and even then if i think about public health, it's still not BIG enough...

i mean, this life, this is It, i don't want to just do little stuff all life long, i want to be at the center of the movements of the universe... i want to dig as far as i possibly can...

ENFPs do you resonate with me?

have you figured out any way to address this?

I totally understand what you're talking about and I feel the same.
I can't help you much, the only thing I can tell you is a lesson I got from my involvement into politics/the social sphere, and I guess it works on a personal level: it's that in order to change something big you have to act locally. politically/socially change takes forever, and it's difficult to see immediate results. and also with time I've gained mistrust of working in big groups/ideologies/hypocrisy/etc, so I chose to follow my own morals and be coherent with myself and do things everyday in a small scale, on a local level (talking to people, being coherent between what you advocate and what you do, participating at actions within your sphere).
0k so I don't know how this can help you but i guess it could work as a nice meme: BE PATIENT, THINK GLOBALLY ACT LOCALLY. Apply it to your life: keep your goals in perspective, focus on achieving them one by one.
(sorry if this didn't help much)

 

[ilovelurking]

I totally understand what you're talking about and I feel the same.
I can't help you much, the only thing I can tell you is a lesson I got from my involvement into politics/the social sphere, and I guess it works on a personal level: it's that in order to change something big you have to act locally. politically/socially change takes forever, and it's difficult to see immediate results. and also with time I've gained mistrust of working in big groups/ideologies/hypocrisy/etc, so I chose to follow my own morals and be coherent with myself and do things everyday in a small scale, on a local level (talking to people, being coherent between what you advocate and what you do, participating at actions within your sphere).
0k so I don't know how this can help you but i guess it could work as a nice meme: BE PATIENT, THINK GLOBALLY ACT LOCALLY. Apply it to your life: keep your goals in perspective, focus on achieving them one by one.
(sorry if this didn't help much)

Love the bolded!

Also, it is important that as you do something you'd love to do make sure it is fun. I just find that even for my ENFP friends, as much as when something is a worthy cause if it gets too serious they get drained real quick.

I am speaking as a coach and an entrepreneur myself. My significant other is ENFP.

 

[mmhmm]

so i've been feeling what pretty much amounts to existential boredom lately - my new relationship kept me all geared up for quite a few months but it's just not enough anymore, i trust it too much to get freaked out enough by it to satisfy my crazy need for Ne stimulation - and i've been thinking about satisfaction, and i've hit this realization that unless i'm doing something really

BIG

i am essentially unsatisfied...

the problem being, ideally i want to be at THE highest level of importance i can get to... not status-wise but big-picture-wise... i want to be global, working at a universal, world level...

but i'm not really sure how i can go about achieving this... i still haven't pursued a higher-ed career path because everything seems so dang small... i want to open up and get connected, not narrow down... for example i would love to be a doctor, but i want to help change healthcare globally, not just with one person a day... and even then if i think about public health, it's still not BIG enough...

i mean, this life, this is It, i don't want to just do little stuff all life long, i want to be at the center of the movements of the universe... i want to dig as far as i possibly can...

ENFPs do you resonate with me?

have you figured out any way to address this?

i think it's alright to start from small.
and while working on it you just need
to keep an open for other pieces to
build on it. i think it's also about trying
to find the common denominator in
all the little things and herding it in
together. without the little things,
it's just one big flat empty thing.

the little things are what kinda build
the dimensions and depth, and varying
degrees, it gives texture to that one
big thing.

i think to even have the capacity to
just dream or desire for something
big is great in itself. and i think the
next greatest thing to that is to not
underestimate how the little things
can build up.

 

[King sns]

Wow, we're definitely on the same wavelength, and I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in comparison to a lot of the people around me.

I'm a nurse pursuing higher education, and you hit the nail on the head when you say, "I want to create a change in healthcare for the better." So, I'm an RN pursuing higher education. In the end, I either can't do the thing I want to do, or the thing I want to do with healthcare isn't really important to begin with, or what I can do just won't be good enough.

I love making a difference in the lives of others, and I do so every day. But there is always this nagging feeling that I have the power to not only change this ladies day or that guy's life, but to change the entire future of healthcare towards wellness- so that every patient, (and person) in the future will somehow benefit. Florence Nightingale style. And that is a tough thing to live with.

When I say, "the people around me", I mean- I will tell people about my plans, (and not to change healthcare, but just say- where I may go with my higher education, which never seems good enough to me,) and they will look at me in awe and say like, "how can you do that? I am happy just being an RN." And while I know that "being an RN" comes with a decent amount of power within a smaller spectrum, and is a very important job in healthcare, I don't understand how they can't see where I'm coming from as well. While some of my smaller and more immediate ambitions are crazy to some, they are just very minor stepping stones for me.

I've always wanted to be "big", not to be famous, but to be at the top of whatever I'm doing- (for downward flowing impact purposes) , so once I've had a base understanding of one thing, I've wanted to move to the next, (a higher level or different thing all together), and I'm afraid that it will be that way my whole life- because in the end I'm just one insignificant person just like almost everyone else on this planet.

(sweet, copied the third section for a personal goals paper that I'm writing- my original work was kind of cold sounding, I'm going to change part of it to this.)

 

[Istbkleta]

Age.

 

[sculpting]

I totally get this-the notion that it isnt enough to help simply one person, but really a deep seated desire to take all of the love/hope/beauty inside and somehow expand that outwards to benefit everyone-as one poster mentioned-it is more a desire to change the system.

metaphorically, if I may wax and wane poetically in a lament:

The world is a place of hurt and sadness for many. If there was a way to dissolve into nothingness, but permeate the mist between the world, that mesh that binds everyone and everything I would do so with the goal of making each person's life just a bit happier, just a bit more whole. I want to take the whole world, place it in my hands and hold it to my chest and let it know it is loved.

at the same time, the sense of unlimited horizens, of always having something bigger to accomplish, of pushing myself to strive past those boundaries runs very strong. I want to be able to explode outwards and let my fingertips graze the very edges of the universe. It feels like a constant folding and enfolding, relinking of everything around me, into a deeper and more continous one-ness. I want to touch the edge of the universe, so that it is linked to every other thing in the universe, via the underlying firmament of love? crazeee.

Pragmatically:

I picked and stuck with a career path as I had to support my son, thus self sufficiency was my top priority. However I picked biochemistry as I had some weird notion of curing cancer or disease. I considered nursing, but as shortnsweet noted, it didnt seem to me that I could help change the system.Once done I left and worked at a small biotech that developed infection, genetic and diagnostic disease products. Evenetually I was promoted to being a product manager, which is an awesome enfp job. As a product manager, everyday you come in and are personally responsible for the future of the product you are responsible for. For the hundreds of people using my product, if I do my job right, they are enabled to do their job more effectively. For my particular product line at my last job, that meant producing massive amounts of data in very novel ways, that could allow huge strides forward in understanding cancer. The reward is not in recognition or in money-but in making people's lives better. Now once the product was working according to their needs, I got bored and the company was so fucking disfucntional, that I found a job at a software company as a product manager. In this case, my choices dont impact health, but they do drastically improve the stress levels and logistical capabilities of the customers using my product-again the reward is in helping their life be just a little bit better each day... so it is rewarding.

The thing may be to pick and stick with a specific area of study-but once complete, identify what roles would allow the greatest systemic influence-perhaps epidemiology in medicine or becoming a physician who works with groups like ADA as an advocate for the patients, or being a physician who conducts research/clinical trials. Back when I was in grad school I recall the MD/PHDs saying very few MDs wanted to do clinical research-yet a huge impact in patient care could be achieved there by design and structuring of new treatment paradigmns.

babble, babble, babble, hope some of this was of value!

 

[Flux]

BIG

ENFPs do you resonate with me?

This really resonates with me in the sense that I want to do something that means something. For me at least life isn't worth living unless you have a purpose. Who knows maybe you should run for President or something? That is pretty big and I'm pretty sure most of us would vote for you haha

 

[alcea rosea]

Kind of sad, but I wanted to do somethin important when in my twenties + younger and after I realized I cannot. Hmmm.. life gets you... Now I just manage of being myself and doing "something".... I have lost my Ne spark somehow!

 

[Crescent Fresh]

... and i've hit this realization that unless i'm doing something really

BIG

i am essentially unsatisfied...

the problem being, ideally i want to be at THE highest level of importance i can get to... not status-wise but big-picture-wise... i want to be global, working at a universal, world level...

This is an interesting topic. Although I'm not an ENFP, I've been feeling the same as you lately.

One tip is that, try to pinpoint those people who had a universal role (and this requires research). Then use LinkedIn to see how they move up their career path and see how they'd started from below.

I really hope you'll discover your true calling eventually!