OK, I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but you believe it was your Ne that allowed you to be successful?
If I can find five ESFPs (or any type for that matter) that escaped a similarly disadvantaged background to achieve what would you say? What allowed them to do it? Do you attribute your personal success to being intuitive or any other functional preferences?
Like I said, I'm not trying to be difficult. It's my pet peeve, but I feel like this needs to be pounded into people's heads. What I understand you to be saying is your ambition, determination, and drive to make a different future for yourself than what you had growing up stems from your being intuitive. Am I understanding you correctly?
I break most of my SES and cultural indicators too and I could throw out a mightier list than yours. I don't attribute it my sensing and intuiting behaviors more than my own industriousness, drive, and sense of personal development.
No problem at all-let me clarify. I can only tell my own story and guess at other folks.
Te gave me the drive and ambition, the rationale (based on visceral Fi pain avoidance) for why I needed to escape. It developed the plans, the sense of responsibility. Te was the key, the organized force behind the drive. It listened to my grandmother, watched my mom, recorded those lessons and then used them.
Maybe some of this was helped by observing the Te lessons and then storing them in Si. I didnt realize until recently how important Si is in ENXPs to help ground the judgments we make with our XiXe. A good example was as a freshman in high school I realized
"If I do not graduate in the top 10% and go to college I be forced on the street with no way to pay my bills". This was an Te fact that I used to ground and I began to look for possible ways out using Ne.
I think Ne allowed me to
see the way past and exploit all the possibilites.
As an ENFJ, doesnt Fe give you "industriousness, drive, and sense of personal development"? I really dont know honestly..
What I see with ESFPs-both my sis and bro and other ESFPs now that I know what to look for-inferior Ni is their achilles heel if they are immature.
Ni seems to allow you to view things from multiple perspectives. ESFPs do this really neat trick of rewriting the past to their own advantage. They rewrite their own parts in their minds so that nothing is ever their fault-always the fault of the other person.
So they dont learn Te lessons the same way I do. My bro eventually grew out of it, but things were bumpy till about 28 when his wife left him and he was out of work. He had to learn responsibility.
My sis is 32 and she is amazing in her ability to never be at fault for anything. My mom and I just assumed she was a pathological liar to be honest-but no maybe in her brain she really does believe her version of the truth due to the inferior Ni it seems.
The more important question once you understand these patterns-What can you do with each of these types to help them succeed?
An ESFP?
1. Cater to Se-take them to an affluent neighborhood. Emphasize that the way you get here is through going to college. Have affluent business men mentor them.
Show them the monetary rewards of finishing school. make them work shit part time jobs to
"see" what happens when you dont finish school. Help
show them scholarships, loans, ways to go to school part time.
Show single moms all the programs out there that can help them, the subsidized day care centers and so on. They have to
"see" the alternative.
2. Cater to Fi-Show them what people who dont finish college end up like. Also, they seek affirmation-surround them with peers who are college bound and they will tend to follow suit. Give them mentors whose praise they will find rewarding. Praise them liberally when they do well. Give them a lot of verbal support and checking in.
3. Teach them to use Te. Teach them to manage money, organize effectively, apply for grants. Put them into programs which structure most of their day so that they can focus on learning to self structure the most important parts. Here also is that sense of responsibility. I am a huge fan of a year of community service for high school kids-teach them they are an integral part of their community. They dont have Fe for that, and tert Te is pretty weak. Check in often and keep them on track.
4. Help them with that inferior Ni by holding them responsible for their actions.
(um, or well, something like that.... for an ISTP it be a different set of needs, an ESFJ something different. Gotta say though in rural white trash america the N's clumped together and most did go on to college.)