I wish I had the answer to that aswell, I've found myself in the same position. I spent 2 years after dropping out from school procrastinating and failing further studies. It wasn't till the start of last year I just decided to do it because I'm wasting too much time. Still though, I have no clue what to do with myself, I'm just doing the bare minimum. I have no passion for this but I can do it (Information technology.) some advice would be good from anyone for all our sakes haha.
I was reading your post and decided to expand on what I said above. So my earlier post is the short version; what follows is the tl;dr version.
Apologies in advance for typos and all that.
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Presumably you want your college and career choices to reflect your Fi values. So let’s start there: Do you really know what your Fi values are? How do you manifest them in your daily behavior?
First, a couple definitions. For the purposes of what follows, Fi = your long-term personal values; Ne = how you interact with the world over the short-term, from day to day and even moment to moment.
How well do your Fi and Ne interact? What kind of a flow of information do you have going between them? For example: You love your parents (or wife or children or whatever), but you tense up and shut them out when they turn whiny or do something wrong. In other words, your long-term value = love; whereas your short-term reaction = tensing up and shutting people out.
When you tense up and shut people out, you are focusing on short-term behavior rather than your long-term values of nurturing communication and understanding. The key is to keep the long-term values in front of yourself so that you have an alternative to merely reacting to the moment and yelling or shutting down.
So here is an exercise. First:
Use your Fi to create a “Personal Mission Statement.†That’s a list of values, things you’re good at, interests, etc. It can be 5-15 lines on a single sheet of paper. For example, if you spend a fair amount of time on TypoC, then that should be on your Personal Mission Statement. Make your Mission Statement reflect your real life and your real desires; don’t get overly fluffy or perfectionist about it.
And the most important principle of all at this stage: Put your Personal Mission Statement on paper. INFPs like to do things in their head (daydream/fantasy mode). Moving things from your head to paper is the start of good planning. An important quote:
“All successful people are planners. They think on paper. Failing to plan, as they say, is planning to fail. And a plan is a list of activities and names.†--From “Never Eat Alone†by Keith Ferrazzi.
Second:
Once you have your Personal Mission Statement on paper, do the following visualization and affirmation exercise (V&A exercise): Spend a few minutes each day in an easy chair in a quiet room and imagine a problem scenario, like your parents (or wife or children or whatever) fussing at you and turning whiny. But role-play the scenario in your head according to the values of your Personal Mission Statement. By creating a comfort zone and doing this at one’s leisure, the old reactive (short-term Ne) scripts can be broken down and new scripts can be developed and played out based on personal values and principles (long-term Fi).
The key here is the Personal Mission Statement: Are you implementing its contents in your life? If not, then role-play ways that you can do so. Imagine ways in which your daily life and your Personal Mission Statement can mirror each other.
Third:
If you do this exercise daily, you’ll get more and more communication going between your Fi and Ne. For example:
Case Study 1: Your Personal Mission Statement includes the line: “I enjoy playing the guitar and want to get better at it.†But on the day-to-day level you never seem to find time for it. So you tell yourself, “I really want to make guitar-playing item a priority in my life. So I’m going to allot 3 half-hour slots per week in the evening when I would probably just be wasting time watching TV or surfing the net.â€
This would be an example of using your Personal Mission Statement to bring your Ne (short-term) daily life more into line with your Fi (long-term) values. The Personal Mission Statement is like a roadmap or a blueprint: It helps you to chart your location and progress toward a goal.
But let’s continue the example: Let’s say you start playing guitar 3 times a week; but after a few weeks you increasingly find yourself getting bored with it and/or forgetting to practice. So eventually you decide: “The
idea of playing guitar was fun, but I’m not actually finding the
implementation of playing the guitar all that much fun.†So you scratch that line about the guitar off your Personal Mission Statement and allocate those 3 slots of time to something else on your Personal Mission Statement.
So that would be an example of using your Personal Mission Statement to bring with your Fi (long-term) values more into line with the realities of your Ne (short-term) daily life. Ne lets you know when Fi is being wishful or just plain unrealistic by checking out what’s actually achievable in the real world and providing feedback to Fi. There should be ongoing communication between your Fi and Ne.
Also, notice that your Personal Mission Statement goes through changes in order to reflect changes in your daily priorities and values. In other words, the Personal Mission Statement isn’t just about setting self-improvement goals; it’s a mirror and record of your life as you actually live it. Like a good map or blueprint, it should be updated frequently to reflect the communication between your Fi and Ne. Put it on paper, keep it in front of you, and consult it frequently.
Case Study 2: Your Personal Mission Statement includes the line: “I want to live the life of a saint. When I become annoyed with people, I want to put my petty annoyance aside and instead ‘kill people with kindness.’†And you practice your V&A exercise every evening to role-play petty disputes that occurred during the day and come up with ways to handle them in accordance with that line on your Personal Mission Statement. In this way, you use your Personal Mission Statement to bring your Ne (short-term) daily life more into line with your Fi (long-term) values.
But let’s continue the example: Let’s say you get better at controlling your temper and handling disputes. But in the process you find yourself getting treated like a doormat; or you find yourself increasingly seething with anger as petty annoyances build up; or you find yourself walking on eggshells around people in order to avoid conflict. So eventually you decide: “The
idea of being a saint remains attractive, but the
implementation is proving more problematic.†So you update your Personal Mission Statement by including a goal about researching anger management, stress reduction, or conflict management. You set this new as a high-priority item and you make time to do the research.
Again, this is an example of using your Personal Mission Statement to bring your Fi (long-term) values more into line with the realities of your Ne (short-term) daily life. Ne informs you that your Fi value is unrealistic or incomplete when implemented in the real world. So the Fi value has to be adjusted in a way that makes it more feasible in the outside world. Instead of adhering doggedly to the “saint model,†it may be more realistic to do some reading on assertiveness.
In this case, the broad topic of “interpersonal relations†remains a high priority. But Fi and Ne go through a testing-and-feedback loop to determine which specific model, ultimately, will prove the best for real-world purposes.
To sum up this whole exercise:
The Personal Mission Statement is absolutely indispensable in this exercise. It provides accountability. You update it regularly so that it accurately reflects where you’re at and where you want to head in life. You prioritize the items in your Personal Mission Statement by importance, and you reflect them in your daily life accordingly. If an item sits on your Personal Mission Statement without being implemented (like learning the guitar), then either move it up in priority and give it a spin, or remove it from your Personal Mission Statement.
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Getting back to the question about college:
If you do this exercise faithfully for a while, your Personal Mission Statement will increasingly become a one-page ongoing “diary†of what’s really important in your life. With that information graphically in front of you, it will probably become a lot easier to spot areas of interest.
For example, Let’s say you spend a lot of time pondering issues of interpersonal relations and conflict management; or maybe you just enjoy spending time on Typology Central and learning about personality typing. Either way, that should appear on your Personal Mission Statement in one form or another. Well, that points toward psychology as a possible interest. After you’ve decided that, you can break it down a little further: Medical psychology (psychologist, psychiatrist, researcher); Counseling and therapy (everything from life coach to social worker); Corporate psychology (human resources), etc.
And from there you can head to the guidance counselor at your school for more assistance.
Another example: You get along fine with people for the most part, and you're not really interested in psychology. But meantime you would like to get in better shape and lose some weight. So you put that at the top of your priority list. To implement it, you start reading up about the various diets and maybe taking some yoga classes. You meet with some successes and failures, and so you dig deeper and study more about health and fitness issues. If it becomes enough of a personal odyssey over time, then perhaps it's good fodder for a line of study and even a career: It opens up the whole medical/health/fitness/diet field for further exploration.
Alternatively, you may hate most of your classes but enjoy a woodworking class. If you’re focused on self-improvement all the time, you may not give that item much weight. But if you’re honest on your Personal Mission Statement and update it regularly, the Personal Mission Statement will also act as a means of self-inventory. If that woodworking class keeps appearing in your Personal Mission Statement as a place where you find relaxation and fun, then maybe it’s an avenue to be explored.
And then once you identify some areas of personal interest, head to a guidance counselor for further assistance.
The main thing is to get that Personal Mission Statement on paper, update it frequently, and actually use it to introduce accountability in your life. It’s not a to-do list; rather it’s a way of checking how much your life reflects your values. At times you will want to adjust your life to better reflect your values; at times the opposite will apply and you will adjust your internal values to better reflect the realities of the outside world.
Your Personal Mission Statement is the place where your Fi and your Ne meet to compare notes. If you can bridge that gap between your Fi and Ne, I think it will become a lot easier to figure out what you want to do with your life and be more productive.
By the way, if you want to read more about the exercise described above, I took it from Habit 2 in the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People†by Stephen R. Covey. The book has lots of other useful info and suggestions.
