Feeling Vs Thinking - An MBTI Felt Thought
You Think
I feel
We meet in the middle destination unknown.
My Myers-Briggs test results has me as an INFP. I never score any other way no matter how many times I've taken it. I have taken short versions of the test, long versions and really long versions. They all come out the same: INFP! Keirsey.com says INFPs represent less than 1% of the population. That's still a lot of people, but it makes us rare. We're also one of the least understood character types. I used to feel like I was the only one in the whole world who felt the way I did. The Myers-Briggs type indicators have helped me to see myself in a much larger sense.
I have a friend I love dearly. He's a Thinker. We have been good friends for many years but lately I've expressed some thoughts that just seem to hang in the air as we talk. It made me start looking at the way I was expressing myself to my friend. Communication is the responsibility of both parties involved in any given discussion. It is my responsibility to communicate effectively if I have the floor. It is the other person's responsibility to open their mind and listen, to truly hear me. I find the latter does not always happen even among the best of friends. I'm as guilty as the next guy. In a recent conversation with my friend I was expressing how I felt about a rather personal matter and as my statements hung in the air, I realized he cannot relate to the way I feel my way through life. I then began to express these same ideas and concepts in a more Extraverted Thinking mode and instantly was getting body language and feedback that showed he was hearing me.
Extraverted Thinking is my inferior skill. While I can do it and express myself this way, it is not my default language of choice. It is also very taxing. For me to do this I expend a great deal of energy or better expressed as it comes at great cost. Lately I've been feeling burdened by my friend in unexplained way until I realized that as we've been talking and I've been making more of an effort to express myself in ET mode, I'm feeling the weight of the effort it takes for me. I have a couple of choices in this I suppose. 1. I could stop hanging out so much with my friend. 2. I could talk about less personal things which would make ET conversing easier, or 3. I could live with it and prepare myself ahead of time.
I am thankful for my background with logic and computers. I use my ability to process logic and write code to translate feeling oriented language into thinking oriented language. For me it means I say "I think this is the right choice for me," rather than my default response of "I feel this is the right choice for me." But it must go deeper than mere word choices. It is also motivations. I have to first stop myself from saying something based on how I feel about the situation and ask myself, "why is this important to someone else?" If I can come up with logical, well-thought out ideas, then I will express myself, but if all I have is a gut feeling, or motivations based on the well-being of others or I might feel someone would be better off with something, then I will not express it. Well almost will not. I have lately been kicking myself in meetings because I didn't keep my mouth shut. I walk out at the end mumbling under my breath, "I'm emoting again." INFPs have a difficult time in the business world in my opinion. I want to champion a cause because I believe it's the right thing for the people I work with but I have trouble converting that into information that can be processed and sold to people who need data that appeals to the five senses- touch, taste, hear, smell and see. Just the facts, man!
I find introverted thinking quite possible. This is an example of both introverted thinking and introverted feeling. I am spending less energy working this out in my head before committing my words to the journal. Some of my statements are factual and data based. Others are emotional and feeling based. I have time to pause between thoughts and collect my ideas before committing them to the page. However, in every day life, I don't always have that luxury. If my passion for something over takes me, I'm spewing emotionally loaded statements before I have a chance to choose my words carefully. For the most part I know to keep my mouth shut and do so as much as possible. That seems to be the best policy. But with friends and confidants, it is nice to be able to be me and express myself however I need to.
Below are links to several web pages about Myers-Briggs Type Indicators if you're interested:
http://www.personalitypage.com
www.keirsey.com
www.typelogic.com
I feel
We meet in the middle destination unknown.
My Myers-Briggs test results has me as an INFP. I never score any other way no matter how many times I've taken it. I have taken short versions of the test, long versions and really long versions. They all come out the same: INFP! Keirsey.com says INFPs represent less than 1% of the population. That's still a lot of people, but it makes us rare. We're also one of the least understood character types. I used to feel like I was the only one in the whole world who felt the way I did. The Myers-Briggs type indicators have helped me to see myself in a much larger sense.
I have a friend I love dearly. He's a Thinker. We have been good friends for many years but lately I've expressed some thoughts that just seem to hang in the air as we talk. It made me start looking at the way I was expressing myself to my friend. Communication is the responsibility of both parties involved in any given discussion. It is my responsibility to communicate effectively if I have the floor. It is the other person's responsibility to open their mind and listen, to truly hear me. I find the latter does not always happen even among the best of friends. I'm as guilty as the next guy. In a recent conversation with my friend I was expressing how I felt about a rather personal matter and as my statements hung in the air, I realized he cannot relate to the way I feel my way through life. I then began to express these same ideas and concepts in a more Extraverted Thinking mode and instantly was getting body language and feedback that showed he was hearing me.
Extraverted Thinking is my inferior skill. While I can do it and express myself this way, it is not my default language of choice. It is also very taxing. For me to do this I expend a great deal of energy or better expressed as it comes at great cost. Lately I've been feeling burdened by my friend in unexplained way until I realized that as we've been talking and I've been making more of an effort to express myself in ET mode, I'm feeling the weight of the effort it takes for me. I have a couple of choices in this I suppose. 1. I could stop hanging out so much with my friend. 2. I could talk about less personal things which would make ET conversing easier, or 3. I could live with it and prepare myself ahead of time.
I am thankful for my background with logic and computers. I use my ability to process logic and write code to translate feeling oriented language into thinking oriented language. For me it means I say "I think this is the right choice for me," rather than my default response of "I feel this is the right choice for me." But it must go deeper than mere word choices. It is also motivations. I have to first stop myself from saying something based on how I feel about the situation and ask myself, "why is this important to someone else?" If I can come up with logical, well-thought out ideas, then I will express myself, but if all I have is a gut feeling, or motivations based on the well-being of others or I might feel someone would be better off with something, then I will not express it. Well almost will not. I have lately been kicking myself in meetings because I didn't keep my mouth shut. I walk out at the end mumbling under my breath, "I'm emoting again." INFPs have a difficult time in the business world in my opinion. I want to champion a cause because I believe it's the right thing for the people I work with but I have trouble converting that into information that can be processed and sold to people who need data that appeals to the five senses- touch, taste, hear, smell and see. Just the facts, man!
I find introverted thinking quite possible. This is an example of both introverted thinking and introverted feeling. I am spending less energy working this out in my head before committing my words to the journal. Some of my statements are factual and data based. Others are emotional and feeling based. I have time to pause between thoughts and collect my ideas before committing them to the page. However, in every day life, I don't always have that luxury. If my passion for something over takes me, I'm spewing emotionally loaded statements before I have a chance to choose my words carefully. For the most part I know to keep my mouth shut and do so as much as possible. That seems to be the best policy. But with friends and confidants, it is nice to be able to be me and express myself however I need to.
Below are links to several web pages about Myers-Briggs Type Indicators if you're interested:
http://www.personalitypage.com
www.keirsey.com
www.typelogic.com