substitute
New member
- Joined
- May 27, 2007
- Messages
- 4,601
- MBTI Type
- ENTP
Y'know, I just realized what forum this thread is on and I suddenly feel like I'm trespassing, but to the extent you might want to talk about it, my thing with that is this: I watch the people around me and listen to them all the time. I am never unaware of people, which is why it wears me out to be around them. After awhile, without anyone saying anything, I know who's full of it and who knows where the staircase is.
Granted, NF's and especially INFP's (if that's where you lean? I dunno) can be very good at summing up people. But so am I - I'm very good at knowing what a person thinks of me and why, and where they're mistaken. If I know I'm right, but that the person doesn't trust me, then the foundation part of that staircase isn't going to be logic based at all. It'll be the part where I convince them that, despite what they might think of me, I have a point if they just bear with me for a minute, give me the benefit of the doubt and let me explain.
Just like you're good at knowing people, but can still sometimes be wrong cos everyone's fallible, I'm good at knowing how people perceive things, including me, though I can sometimes be wrong as to the best way to persuade them that they're wrong, if I believe they are. And some people, well, there doesn't seem to be a way to convince them they're wrong about you, once they take a disliking to you.
Also, it's kinda alien to me, the idea of someone being unwilling to climb the stairs, to extend the analogy to breaking point! I mean, I'll always climb any staircase, what's to lose? If it turns out to be BS at the top, what've I lost? Not a lot really, but I could still extract a lesson from the experience. My curiosity and openness gets the better of me pretty much every time, I know if I turn someone away I'll be wondering for ages and kicking myself, thinking, you know, suppose he was a schmuck but still had a point and my prejudice against him made me miss out on learning something? If I don't like what I see, I can always climb back down again and put it down to experience, but I might as well at least have a look. And I guess that's a symptom of just how open my views are to questioning or change - no matter what I think, I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong, and I find it hard to understand when people are not.