By Marc Carson, www.friendlyskies.net/intj
Copyright 2016, Marc Carson, All Rights Reserved.
I'd like to thank the following:
"I've already tried that."
In my experience, this phrase will slow INTJ personal growth to a tremendous degree. In reading this book, I recommend that you avoid that kind of thinking, and instead take notes and study as if you are drinking the very nectar of wisdom, and as if you are the first to discover a novel experience.
The typical INTJ mind is biased toward convergent thinking. Jung described us as "introverted intuitives," who often preoccupy ourselves with the construction of a single vision of how things will turn out. This can be a strength, insofar as it makes us efficient problem-solvers who waste no time getting down to what works. But it can also be a weakness, keeping us from the benefits of new experiences and potentially shutting our mind to possibilities.
For this reason, keeping an open mind--yes, even open to that thing you already know about--is one of the healthiest traits you can develop as an INTJ.
Life is a fractal, and like a fractal, the repeating patterns are usually quite different from one another if examined with close attention.
I looked in the mirror and tried to suppress a smile.
It was 5 a.m. and I was standing in my bathroom, with my shirt off, taking a selfie on my phone.
"This is ridiculous. Imagine if this photo got out," I thought to myself. But I had to record the moment.
I was 38 years old and now had the body I wished I had when I was 18. Over the last two years, I had lost 100 pounds, over 35% of my body weight.
How did I do it? Simple: I learned what an introvert was (well, my mentor, Mike Carroll, helped me figure it out).
Carl Jung's first term for what we now call an INTJ was "introverted intuitive." He defined introverts in general as being withdrawn from outside factors, hesitant to approach an external "object", whatever that might happen to be. Another person, a new type of technology, or the idea of travel to a radically new place, for example.
In addition, Dr. Jung said of the introverted intuitive personality type, "it can even foresee new possibilities in more or less clear outline, as well as the event which later actually transpires." That was true for me, I had often played the role of the grumpy guy who "foresaw" what would happen and shot it down before my friends or work team could really begin. Learning about the positive aspects of introverted intuition helped me realize that cultivating and listening to optimistic visions was an area I had long neglected.
In my life to this point, the external "object" of Dr. Jung had been my weight. I was obese and I was in denial. I had myself convinced that I was happy with my weight, but I really wasn't. And as an introvert, I had closed my mind to this object, letting it get worse over time, avoiding it. I didn't even dare to visualize a skinny future for myself, knowing deep inside that it would require more psychological tools than I possessed at the time.
It was only when I slowly began to extravert my thinking toward my weight, my happiness, and my life in general, that things began to change. I did this by starting a "life improvement journal," a simple notebook in which I noted every day whether I was making progress in life, how much I was making, and how I felt about that. My inspiration for this journal was Jordan Mechner, the creator of the video games "Prince of Persia," and "Karateka" back in the 1980s. Jordan published his journals online and after reading them, I recognized the potential benefit of getting my thoughts out of my head, onto paper.
The journal writing helped me shine a light on the matter of my weight and examine it closely. It engaged my natural extravert. Introverted, intuitive INTJs have access to a powerful auxiliary toolset called "extraverted thinking." We can use this ability to take actual measurements and objectively assess things to solve huge problems.
The journal first exposed my tendency to eat excessively while under stress. In what a Jungian analyst like Dr. Naomi Quenk might call an "eruption of inferior extraverted sensing," I was binging on food when my biggest strength, intuition, just couldn't get me past life's problems all by itself. It could have been anything sensory--too much TV, loud music, fast driving, vibrant artwork--but the fact is, I was relying too much on my senses to help me cope with the shortcomings of my intuition, and I needed more support. Thank goodness for the journaling, which pulled me away from my senses enough to realize that I had a gift for extraverting my thinking to break down walls.
To an INTJ, it's not easy to continually write about a problem without eventually getting sick enough to attack it. And that's just what I did, diving into personality type literature to see what kind of healthy INTJ model I might be able to use as a reference.
As I read the book "8 Keys to Self-leadership" by Professor Dario Nardi, I found additional INTJ strengths to try. Dario identifies key areas for growh and suggests that INTJs work on developing "introverted thinkng," among other cognitive functions.
The discovery of introverted thinking was a revelation to me. I learned to create frameworks in order to solve problems, and to refine those frameworks as I worked on the problems. I started creating lists of ideas, applying the ideas, and then making those idea frameworks more elegant over time. Soon I had a number of additional breakthroughs in areas like fitness, productivity, creating art, and cultivating friendships. As I found new leverage points, I added them to my frameworks and found excitement in altering my daily routines for the better.
The more I wrote in my journal, the more my simple observations also began to merge into suggested frameworks. I wrote down my own rules for maximizing my weight loss potential. As I put the rules into practice (for example, rules for eating a meal without overeating--drinking lots of water and using the hunger scale to monitor my satiety), I discovered effective leverage points that helped me find higher ground. This got me past my biggest plateau after I lost my first 50 pounds.
Are there problems or frustrations in your life that continually frustrate you? Do you feel stressed, bored, depressed, or overly self-indulgent? If so, this book may help. You can read more about how to use the book in the "How to Use This Book" section, below.
My goal in this book is to give you opportunities to use and get used to your INTJ gifts, perhaps to a degree you haven't experienced before. In order to to this, I will attempt to engage your introverted intuition (abbreviated as Ni), extraverted thinking (Te), and introverted thinking (Ti). Additional "cognitive functions," as they are called, will also be found here, but those three functions are my focus. While everyone has access to all eight cognitive functions and develops them to some degree, I believe INTJs can cover a lot of ground with Ni, Te, and Ti. As you read, you'll know you're engaging your powerful INTJ gifts when you feel interested, excited, or begin to cackle. I always thought that a good cackle signalled the beginning of something worth doing.
I hope you enjoy reading 300 INTJ Strengths to Try.
-- Marc Carson, Ukiah, California
This book uses the four-letter Jungian type code "INTJ" to indicate people with a preference for:
Are you an INTJ? Great! I wrote this book with you in mind.
If you're not an INTJ, might this book still be useful? Yes, I believe so. For example, many of the items within will probably be compelling for an ESFP or an INFP, or bestow new ideas upon an ENTP with a mind to broaden their personal development.
So if you're not an INTJ, and this book seems like it might be useful or interesting, please keep reading.
I've listed about 300 strengths below. There are a few more thrown in, in case you're really disappointed by the first 300 (I won't charge you extra just because I'm compelled toward such ridiculous contingency planning).
You don't need to read this book in its entirety, or "finish" it.
To begin, flip or scroll through the book and see what looks interesting to you, then, get out your notebook, journal, or spreadsheet, and dive in. Harnessing your interests is a key ingredient in getting the most out of life. Make sure to reward yourself for developing a deep "inner world." A deeply interesting inner world is a fundamental part of being a satisfied INTJ and is thus an important part of achieving life balance.
Next, in order to take advantage of the book for the purpose of getting back in control of your life, begin to extract the general approaches that are recommended in the strengths listed inside this book. Focus on the verbs used, combined with other principles like points of leverage, and begin to apply those verbs and principles to your life problems.
This is not homework, and it is definitely not a checklist. If you feel bored or disinterested by an item listed in the book, I recommend that you quickly move along to another item.
If you start to go on a mental tangent, feel free to drop the book and follow the tangent. I hope you find the book fun to use in that way.
If you feel burnt out and nothing here seems interesting, don't worry about it. We all need to reclaim our balance from time to time, and that can mean completely different things depending on your current circumstances. Maybe you need to relax and watch a movie. Maybe you need to browse the web for a while. Such diversions are natural for even the most mature INTJs.
Simple tools like a pen and paper will be very handy as you use this book. Writing materials enable you to become the author and architect of your own life. It's easy to constantly take in others' ideas, googling tips here and there or buying e-books, but the act of writing can begin new journeys into your personal development--journeys that are by definition tailored to your unique gifts and needs.
We INTJs are autodidacts. This book is not meant to teach you. It is meant to help you teach yourself. If you get the urge to write your own thoughts about a topic you find here, or do something else entirely, do it.
Finally, we INTJs are sometimes workaholics. We may immediately identify the way a gigantic framework could be used to extract maximum value from a small resource. So with that said, some of the items below can take a lot of work if you think of them in that way! It is up to you to decide what is worth your time, or to find a way to make the work more efficient.
The strengths listed below are in no particular order (in fact I shuffled them with a Perl script prior to publishing) and are not categorized.
Marc Carson is a professional marketing communications consultant and web developer, whose work has been covered in publications like the New York Times and L.A. Times. Marc initially studied Jungian typology in order to understand his clients' needs and communication styles, and quickly thereafter developed a deeper interest in Jungian psychology.
Marc is a certified administrator of the Majors PTi restricted psychometric instrument, created by Dr. Mark Majors. Trained in the use of type by Mark Bodnarczuk of the Breckenridge Institute, Marc is also a member of APTi, the Association for Psychological Type International. Marc offers his advice and experience to INTJs through his website at www.friendyskies.net/intj.
Married with three young children, Marc loves to find excuses to spend casual time with his family. He also enjoys walking as a form of mental & physical exercise, reading non-fiction, retro computing, drawing and sketching, watercolor and gouache painting, computer programming, studying languages, shorthand writing, journaling, espionage-related films, and neography.
Marc previously lived in Japan where he acquired critical extraversion skills as a Mormon missionary, holding conversations in Japanese with over 30,000 people, riding thousands of miles past rice paddies and bamboo groves on a rickety bicycle, surviving two typhoons and the flyover of a North Korean Taepodong-1 missile, and only getting hit by a car once.