My personality

Over here I’ve talked about my personality type being an INFP.

Quiet, reflective, and idealistic. Interested in serving humanity. Well-developed value system, which they strive to live in accordance with. Extremely loyal. Adaptable and laid-back unless a strongly-held value is threatened. Usually talented writers. Mentally quick, and able to see possibilities. Interested in understanding and helping people.

I wanted to explore it a bit more.

I found a ‘portrait of an INFP‘, which I’m using to help me talk about my personality. As far as I can tell, it’s completely accurate.

It calls me an idealist. That’s certainly true. I have this vision of an ideal world, and am often frustrated when reality doesn’t match my vision. And yet, I find myself frustrated because I know reality could BE like my vision, if only more people cared.

My primary mode of living is focused internally, where I deal with things according to how I feel about them, or how they fit into my personal value system. My secondary mode is external, where I take things in via my intuition.

I’m focused on making the world a better place for people, finding the meaning of my life, and what my purpose is. Interestingly, finding my purpose has been quite challenging. Maybe my purpose is to help make the world better for people? I’ll have to explore that idea….

I’m highly intuitive about people, relying on my intuition to guide me, and I use my discoveries to search for value in life. I’m on a continuous mission to find the underlying truth and meaning to things. Every encounter and everything I learn gets sifted through my value system, and is evaluated to see if it will be useful in helping me move forward on my path. The goal is always the same – to help people and make the world a better place.

I’m flexible and laid back – until one of my values are violated, which turns me into an aggressive defender, fighting passionately for the cause. That’s certainly me, with the political stuff I’ve been ‘passionate’ about in the recent past.

When it comes to the ordinary details of life, I’m completely unaware of things. I might not notice a stain on the carpet at all, or dust building up in the corners or on items around the house. Small, mediocre things aren’t important in the grand scheme of things. I focus on feelings, and the ‘big picture’… housework is something that will be done when I trip over it. (Although this has changed considerably since Deidre moved in early last year…. now I actually have a list of things to do around the house, but that’s still no guarantee of getting everything ‘just right’….)

Facts and logic often get in the way of a good emotional analysis. Why worry about facts when the feelings are all that are important? Some of my friends in the past have often been frustrated about this, where they rely more on logic than emotions.

I’m a talented writer (although I don’t feel I’m talented enough…), which allows me to express myself quite well in my writing, but relatively awkward when expressing myself verbally. In a social situation, where all eyes are on me, I often don’t know what to say (unless I know them exceptionally well).

The traits that are very strong in me are: