What does it mean to be authentic? Answers vary based on individual values and needs. Our desire for authenticity reflects our desire to create something more in our lives.

For example, if someone values relationships but they can’t tell that friend they have a crush on how they really feel, then they’ll see their “real” selves as someone who can be open. They’ll define authenticity as openness and honesty. If someone values freedom, but feels stuck in their job or their life, then they’ll see their authentic self as someone who follows their dreams. This person will define authenticity as being true to themselves.

Definitions of authenticity have different inherent assumption. Some of these assumptions in real life make achieving authenticity almost impossible.

Definitions of Authenticity

Definition 1: Authenticity as being yourself

Assumption: That it’s possible not to be yourself

Example:
You’re a bit shy. You want to be more confident so you can talk to that cute girl or boy that you’ve been crushing on for months. You like the person you are. You consider yourself nice and considerate, but in some areas you wish you could be more the type of person who can go after what the want.

So what is the authentic you in this example? Is the real you the shy person or is it the more confident person you want to be?

If authenticity is defined as being who you are now, wouldn’t that mean just accepting yourself as the shy quiet person that wants to be notice even if this makes you unhappy? If authenticity is being the more confident person, then does that mean you’re not being yourself currently.

Being yourself is not an either or choice between who you are now and who you want to be. You are always you. Authenticity in this context is about acceptance. It’s accepting who you are and your wants.

The problem I find with this definition is that there’s no impetus for change. Accepting yourself and your wants doesn’t necessarily translate into achieving your wants. So if you’re unhappy with your situation now, being authentic in this context doesn’t mean require taking action.

Definition 2: Authenticity as being true to yourself

Assumption: A person doesn’t have conflicting values.

Example:
Say for example, honesty is one of your highest values. And another one of your highest values is harmony.

Someone close to you introduces you to their new significant other. You find this new other completely obnoxious. You see that person treats your close friend terribly but your friend doesn’t see that or your friend just dismisses it as something minor.

If authenticity is being true to yourself, would that mean you are honest and tell you friend that this person they’re seeing is bad for them or do you keep quiet and maintain harmony and be there for you friend when the relationship goes badly?

What if your highest values are friendship and treating yourself kindly? This new significant other not only treats your friend horribly but they’re pretty obnoxious to you. Your friend and their significant other are always together these days. Is authenticity spending time with your friend (friendship) or avoiding her to keep away from the obnoxious significant other (treating yourself kindly)?

We run into our situations daily where we have to choose between our highest values like staying at our job or school (security) or running off the another city or country (freedom). Whenever we have to make these choices between values we don’t feel more authentic, we just feel we made the best choice we could at the time.

The problem that I notice with authenticity defined as being true to yourself is that it doesn’t always make you a better person. Spouses have left long-term marriages in order to be true to themselves. Relationships tend to suffer when being true to yourself means choosing your wants first. At a certain point being true to yourself becomes selfish and you have to want to make selflessness a part of who you are.

Throughout our lives, we have periods when we don’t know where we’re going with our lives or what we should be doing. A bad breakup, loss of job or loved one or a change of heart can make once immutable goals seem no longer relevant.

We become a bit lost but that lost feeling seems oddly right for the moment. We’re in downtime. Downtime is a period where we regroup, conserve energy and figure things out. If downtime extends too long we get antsy and feel that we should be doing something more.

However, after having no direction for so long, it’s hard to figure out what we should be moving towards. The more we try to get ourselves moving, the less appealing our choices become. Nothing we do feels right.

Be The Right Person

In Good To Great, Jim Collins explains the idea of the Hedgehog Concept which helps in figuring out what to do.

The step before the Hedgehog Concept for a company is to find the right people. Collins says that the right people as part of the company will do the right thing even if the company doesn’t have a clear direction. The right people don’t need to be managed. When the company does find it’s Hedgehog Concept, it’s the right people who will have the skills, attitude and motivation to move the company onto that new path.

Applied to an individual, “find the right people” equates to be the right person. If you’re the right person than you don’t need to manage yourself. You won’t need to manage self-defeating behavior or limiting beliefs. If we don’t know our Hedgehog Concept yet, being the right person keeps us growing until we do figure out what we should be doing.

For example, if you see yourself as an artist or a writer and want to make a living at your craft, being the right person means being someone who practices their craft every day. Writers who make a living at writing learn to overcome procrastination. They write a certain number of words daily even when they aren’t inspired. They know how to compose query letters and approach publishers. If you want to work as a writer, you need to have habits and the knowledge first.

Figuring Out Who We Want To Be

We are not one thing. Like a company, our lives are complex network of relationships. A company is not just the CEO. Similarly, no person is just a writer or just a parent.

An exercise I learned from E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, is how to create an organization chart. Gerber’s book is about why businesses fail and what to do about it.

Gerber says that before anyone starts a business, they should write down the organization chart of the entire company from CEO all the way down. In each position in the organization chart, they write down specific responsibilities and tasks that will make that position successful. This way no responsibilities gets missed. At first, the small business owner writes his name in each of the position and must do all the tasks. As the company grows, the owner hires people to replace their name on the org chart.

I’ve applied this concept to my life my creating a Role Chart. Any life requires a set of Roles that need to be played. Those roles demand certain responsibilities and require tasks in order to be successful. For example, if parent is one of the Roles in our lives then one of the required tasks is spend time with our children. If we spend zero time with them then being successful in that Role is unlikely.

My main roles are husband, parent, son, brother, income generator, writer, life long learner, contributor, self-caretaker

Those roles have sub-roles. For me, friend falls under the category of contributor. I see that sub-role as being someone who improves the lives of the people in my life. World traveler and computer geek falls under life long learner. Cook and maid falls under husband and parent.

Although our Roles are not our Identity, the sum of our Roles equates to the life that we live. Anything that I want to be doing with my life falls under one of those Roles. For example, I like to play video games when I get the chance. It gives me the chance to unwind. That falls under the Role of self-caretaker. I like to travel which falls under the Role of life long learner.

What if what we want is more abstract like to be more outgoing or to be better at relationships? Being requires doing. We can’t be more outgoing without doing the things that make us more outgoing. We can’t be more outgoing, unless we do something besides stand in the corner. We can’t be better at relationships if we don’t do something like improve communication skills.

Also actions needed differ between Roles. Improving our relationships as a parent requires different actions than than improving our relationships as a income generator.

The Purpose of Roles

Roles fill needs. I wrote about Tony Robbins six critical needs: Certainty, Uncertainty, Growth, Critical Significance, Love and Connection, and Contribution.

My Role as father meets my needs of Uncertainty, Love and Connection, and Growth. My Role as income earner meets my needs of Certainty and Growth.

Lives with the most stability have those needs supported across many Roles. When we put all our needs into a single basket like the Role of significant other, our lives fall apart should something happen to that relationships. If that single basket is dropped, all our needs are now completely unmet.

Sometimes, we have Roles in our life that meet none of those needs. Those Roles then have to be re-evaluated. Roles have actions and if those actions don’t fill a need then we are doing things that don’t contribute to our lives.

Idealism and Roles

There are no ideal Roles, only ideal ways to play that Role. Those ideal ways are different for everyone. For some, world famous movie star or successful entrepreneur is a better way to play the Role of income earner than McJob employee.

This is where conflicts with “reality” arises. We want to play a Role one way, but we’ve either repeatedly failed or don’t know how so we do something else, something less ideal for that Role in order to fill our needs. This is especially true with careers and relationships.

Being Better at Your Roles

Being better at a Role does not mean creating a Bucket List and going from one accomplishment to another. Roles are continuous because the critical needs are continuous. Roles don’t stop when we cross off an item. If taking the kids to Disney World is on our list, our role as parent doesn’t end at Disney World. We don’t tell our kids, I’m sorry you’re getting picked on at school, but I took you to Disney World and therefore have met my Love and Connection needs so you kids need to figure this one out for yourselves.

Accomplishing a Bucket List doesn’t make you better at your Roles, being better at your Roles lets you accomplish your Bucket List. Being better means being better at the basics.

Each Role has basics. Our basics are habits like listening attentively or exercising regularly. If our Bucket List has running a marathon, the habit of exercising daily under the Role of self-caretaker is going to give us the ability to accomplish that item.

Being better at a Role means doing little things each day that improve our habits in that Role. Taking our kids to one big trip doesn’t make up for long periods of inattentiveness. We often focus on significant goals as a way to distract ourselves from having to face the day-to-day repetition required to be better at the basics.

Being Aimless

Being aimless doesn’t mean doing nothing. We are always doing something. The question is whether that something contributes to our ideal life.

Being aimless means that we pause from crossing off goals on a list. Goals are only good if they’re the right goals for us. Sometimes that changes. Our values change. Our priorities change. Items on the list we made five or ten years ago, may no longer make sense. When climbing the ladder of our own personal success, that ladder needs to lean against the right wall.

Sometimes we don’t know if it’s the right wall anymore. At those times, it’s better to stop climbing, take a break to decide whether we should keep moving or climb down and start again on a different wall.

By focusing on being better at each Role, we improve our lives without measuring ourselves by crossing off an item on our list that may prove to be meaningless later. Being better at a Roles means continually improving habits and skills while keeping an eye out for opportunities to improve the way we do that Role. Doing this leads to new things we never considered before. It’s the right new things that gets us moving again.

The most important thing I learned from Robert Kiyosaki about real estate investment was that a house isn’t an asset. It’s a liability. I don’t own it. The bank does. It costs me utilities, maintenance, insurance, taxes and interest each month. Over a 30-year loan, I will have paid over 80% in interest. I would then need to sell my house for at least three times it’s current value in order to break even.

A house is a liability because I’m still responsible for it even though I don’t own it yet. If I don’t make a payment, the bank takes the house away along with all the money I’ve put into so far. If the house burns down and I have no insurance, I still owe the bank the money I borrowed.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being a homeowner. Owning a house fits my lifestyle, but I have no illusion that owning a house that I live in will make me a financial profit. People buy houses thinking they’re making an investment when in reality they’re taking on debt.

This is how I feel about dreams. INFPs think following a dream is an investment for future happiness, but sometimes it ends up costing us more than we realize.

Our Dreams as Investment

All dreams have a payoff, a Return on Investment (ROI). That ROI on achieving our dream is usually in the form of happiness and fulfillment. No one dreams great dreams that will leave them feeling unfulfilled and unhappy.

One of my dreams is to climb Kilimanjaro. In order to do that, I’ll have to invest time and energy getting into shape, research and taking the time away from family. I have to invest resources by buying gear, plane ticket and a guide. In return, I hope to get a sense of fulfillment by crossing an item off my To Do List. I hope to get happiness in the form of a new experience. I hope to learn something that I can share with others. My ROI in the form of happiness, fulfillment and growth will be worth more to me than the investment of time, effort and money.

Everyone has dreams with payoffs in excess of the investment we put in. Whether it’s the 10,000 hours to become an expert at writing or running our own business, whether it’s the scrimping and saving to buy our first house, we invest in our dreams because we think we will feel better and happier after accomplishing those dreams.

However, INFPs do two things that give us poor returns on our dreams. INFPs sacrifice the now for the eventually. We hold jobs we don’t like or put up with people we don’t want in our lives if we see it as a means to achieving our dreams. On the other side, INFPs with our terrible grasp of delayed gratification, sacrifice tomorrow for today. We put stuff on credit card. We blow off our commitments. We take it easy now and hope that the future will work itself out on its own. We have to invest better.

Dreams in Changing Market Conditions

The problem chasing a dream for a future payoff is that the dream may not pay off later. Sometimes bad things happen. I could trip and break my leg the day before the flight to Kilimanjaro. Luckily, catastrophic luck is uncommon. What’s more common for INFPs is achieving a dream we no longer want.

The ROI in achieving a dream is usually happiness, fulfillment and growth. When we stop wanting what we’ve worked for then we don’t feel happy or fulfilled in achieving our dream . We end up feeling wishy-washy, regretting the wasted time and effort.

One example is students who change majors. As they learn more about their profession, they become less enchanted with the prospect of doing that profession day-to-day. Even worse, an INFP gets a job they dreamed about and it turns out to be less than ideal, but they’re stuck at that job to pay off student loans and establish a life beyond school.

Not wanting what we’ve worked for happens because of changing market conditions. That market is you.

In the early 2000′s, people invested in real estate because they heard others were making money in real estate. Housing prices had been rising for decades so many made the assumption that housing growth would continue. They invested heavily leveraging themselves beyond their means. When the housing market crashed in 2005, those investors were left with more debt than the value of their house. Getting rid of their investments produced negative ROI, but they couldn’t afford to continue paying.

INFPs make the same basic assumption. Just because a dream makes us happy today, doesn’t mean that it will continue to make us happy tomorrow. Our dreams make us happy in today’s market i.e. how we are today. However, we change. Our values change. Because those values change, we make different decisions including the decision of which dreams will make us happy. INFPs leave jobs we once considered dream jobs and leave relationships with that person we once thought was “the one” because those things no longer make us happy.

As we grow, we can’t guarantee ourselves that dreams that make us feel happy and fulfilled now will continue to do so.

Happiness on Happiness Return

In real estate, a different way to view ROI is Cash on Cash Return (CCR). CCR is the percentage return based on the actual cash invested. If we put $20,000 down on a house and we rent the house for $200 over the cost of mortgage and expenses, then our CCR would be 12% annually ($200 x 12mo / $20,000). If the market takes a dive and we lower rent to only net $85/month, we still make a 5% return which is better than sticking $20K in a bank to collect interest.

Happiness on happiness return is the amount of happiness that we get now in doing those things to achieve our payoff later.

We achieve a high rate of happiness on happiness return by investing in our happiness now in order to achieve our dreams. It’s finding happiness in journey, in the tasks we need to do today so we can make our dreams happen tomorrow. This way, even if our dreams change, we don’t regret our time and effort invested because what we were doing made us happy.

Making a Better Investment

Our dreams give us our individuality. It propels our growth. The moment we stop investing in our dreams is when apathy and entropy take over our lives. The object is to invest more wisely.

1. Get out of bad investments

We tend to hold onto a bad investment in hopes that it will turn the corner. We stay in bad relationships. We continue doing work that makes us unhappy. We don’t want to take a loss because it means we failed.

Zero-based thinking
The quickest way to know if your dream has become a bad investment is to ask: knowing what I know now, would I have gotten into this in the first place? If the answer is no. It’s time to get out.

The 80/20 Rule
Getting out isn’t easy. If it’s a job you don’t like but you need to pay rent, you often times can’t quit outright. Simplify things you want to get out of by applying the 80/20 rule which states 80% of results comes from 20% of efforts. Figure out the 20% that achieves your current results and do only those tasks. That way you do less, freeing up energy to be used for transitioning to the next dream.

2. Educate yourself

Investing requires a modicum of financial literacy to avoid simple mistakes that could become potentially disastrous. Investing in dreams requires basic emotional literacy to avoid mistakes. You have to know yourself before you can be true to yourself.

Figure out values
If your doctor told you that you had a month to live, what you spend that month doing? Whatever you answer is your highest value. If you answered that you’d spend time with my family instead of finishing up that project at work, family is a higher value than work. Dreams that don’t align with values are discarded and we lose our investment of time.

Figure out needs
When we no longer want a dream, it doesn’t mean the need that dream was going to meet has gone away. We have six critical needs. Maybe the job we wanted would have made us feel special (Critical Importance need) but then we realized that we’d never be very good at it so we quit our schooling for that job. This doesn’t mean our need for Critical Importance is gone and we still need to find something to meet that need.

3. Find leverage

Investing $20K in shares of stock only gets a return on $20K. Putting $20K down on property can get a house costing over $200,000. That is leverage. Finding the right lever for your dreams can help you move mountains.

Write down goals
This doesn’t have to be a list. It can be a journal. It could be a blog. Once goals are written, it solidifies from the ether of INFP wishful thinking into a practical lever that keeps us accountable to our integrity.

Don’t reinvent the wheel
Someone has that job we want or that relationships we’ve dream of. Find the people that started where we started and are currently where we want to go and learn how they did it. We don’t need to spend the thousands of hours of trial and error like they did. Our task is to use those hours to figure out a way to do what they did in a way that will keep us interested, engaged and happy now.

I’ve never been a fan of Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs because I never saw people moving from Physiological needs to Self-Actualization in any type of linear progression. We jump around. Sometimes love is more important than eating. Sometimes people forgo love completely for esteem through achievement.

Instead, I prefer Tony Robbins definition of the six basic human needs.

Certainty – This is our need to be free from constant worry. In order to achieve this we develop a certain amount of consistency like getting a job or buying a house. We don’t want to worry everyday about how we’re going to eat or where we can sleep safely.

Uncertainty – This is our need for variety. If we knew everything that was ever going to happen in our lives then our lives would be boring.

Critical Significance – This is our need to feel special. Some people make a lot of money to feel significant. Other people get a lot of tattoos. It’s different for everyone.

Love and Connection – This is our need for belonging. We don’t want to feel like we’re all alone inside our heads and our lives.

Growth – This is our need to avoid stagnation. Our lives never reach equilibrium. We are either growing or dying. If we stay at the same point in our lives for long enough, our level of happiness declines.

Contribution – This is our need to feel our lives are more than just ourselves. We don’t want to die feeling like our lives made no difference to anyone.

Achievement vs Fulfillment

Achievement comes from being successful in one or more of these areas. Fulfillment comes from not feeling lack in every area.

Achievement gives us short term happiness. We get a really good job and make a lot of money or we build the largest ball of twine and we meet our need of critical significance. It gives us self-confidence in that area. However, if the other areas are lacking we feel unhappy.

No matter how much success we have, if love is lacking and we feel disconnected from others, we’re unhappy. If we have a great family and friends and we feel totally connected, but we feel that we haven’t done much else to reach our dreams then our Growth need hasn’t been met and we feel like were in a rut.

Lasting happiness doesn’t mean great achievement in all these areas. To feel fulfilled, we only have to meet our basic needs in each area so we don’t feel like we are missing something from our lives.

Meeting Multiple Needs

Everything we do meets multiple needs. We don’t do one thing just to meet one need. I write this blog to meet my need for Critical Significance and Contribution. When my wife and I adopted, that decision lead to meeting our needs for Love and Connection, Contribution, Growth and Uncertainty.

I’ve found that certain Need combinations are healthier than others. The big combination I avoid is trying to mix Love and Connection with Critical Significance. This is the combination that gives you helicopter parents with a control issues. I think it also leads to deciding to have kids to save failing marriages and staying with people that treat you poorly.

When we combine needs we can focus on a fewer actions to meet those needs. Focusing on fewer things let’s us be better at those things. That’s how you a person gets both achievement and fulfillment.

Good vs Bad Need Combinations for INFPs

Good: Love and Connection with Growth – This keeps us focused on letting people into our lives that make us a better person.

Bad: Love and Connection with Critical Significance – This leads to neediness and unbalanced relationships because all relationship have a degree of Uncertainty and we get desperate if we see that relationship ending.

Good: Critical Significance and Contribution – This combination lets us do great things to help other people. It makes us have lives that isn’t just about us.

Bad: Critical Significance and Uncertainty – We get bored as INFPs. This leads us to taking stupid risks in order to feel more alive. This could be moving across the country or leave jobs and people. This is why we fall into intense relationships and start getting restless when we are finally confronted with the day-to-day realities of a relationship.

Good: Growth with anything except Certainty – Growth means having goals and getting to somewhere we aren’t yet. It means taking calculated risk. You can’t grow by doing more of staying where you are.

Bad: Critical Significance and Certainty – This is our desire to be right overcoming our desire to be effective. Thinking and being different than everyone else makes us feel special. However, we hold onto beliefs to feel special even though we realize that those beliefs haven’t made us happy.

Our Order of Needs

The order of importance of our needs is different from person to person. The order of importance is based on values. Some value Love and Connection over Critical Significance. Some value Contribution over Certainty.

Each unmet Need is a hurt. We hurt in that area. However, like our physical bodies we usually focus on our greatest hurt. If we’re in a car crash and we break our femur, we’re not going to feel the contusions our face. It’s the same with Needs. If Love and Connection is our highest Need, we’re not going to feel unmet Certainty Needs. After a breakup with someone we love, we don’t care about our job or if we eat.

Single people spend a lot of time being single. Broke people spend a lot of time being broke. Unhappy people spend a lot of time being unhappy. We focus on and talk about the things that are causing hurt in our lives. Unfortunately what we focus on becomes more real.

You know why people get into accidents by hitting the only tree in the middle of nowhere. They lose control of the wheel for a second and the first thing they do is focus on the thing they don’t want. Don’t hit that tree. Don’t hit that tree. And they end up hitting that tree because by focusing on the tree, their hands are unconsciously turning the wheel towards the tree.

It’s the same with all areas of our life. The more we focus on our lack, the more we turn the wheel of our lives towards that lack. Haven’t you ever heard people say, I found the husband/wife shortly after I decided to stop looking? It’s not that they stopped looking. It’s because they focused on something else other than being lonely.

Growth is the easiest Need to meet

Even though we may value other needs more intensely, Growth is the easiest to meet because it doesn’t require anyone else.

Certainty requires that someone else give us a job or that the grocery store doesn’t close early or the tax law doesn’t change or a variety of things beyond our control. Uncertainty requires outside situations because we only do things that surprise us when we are forced to. Critical Significance requires other people to recognize we did something significant. Love and Connection requires someone else for us to love. Contribution requires someone to reap the fruits of our efforts.

Growth is the only need that doesn’t require someone else. Growth is decision and action. We grow every time we make a decision and commit to it by taking action towards that decision. We grow by taking small actions each day to become our Ideal Self. If our Ideal Self is someone who is self-confident. We set a small goal each day and accomplish that small to build our confidence. If our Ideal Self is loving, we learn to consistently do thing to show that love for the people we care about. Growing is doing.

It’s from focusing on Growth that gives INFPs the self-confidence to attract those things and people into our lives that let us meet our other needs.

I like junk food. I love Kit Kat bars and triple chocolate cheesecake. I like soda.

About a month a go, I stopped drinking two sodas each day. I would get to work in the morning and drink a Mountain Dew for the caffeine. Then I’d have a Coke with lunch. If I was going out that night to eat with friends then it would be another Coke plus at least 1 or 2 refills.

Then I stopped, but not completely. I’ve had three sodas in the last month. I don’t think I’ll ever stop completely because I like soda. I like a lot of things that have no nutritional value, but I don’t eat Kit Kat bars and triple chocolate cheesecake with dinner every night.

That’s why I don’t think I will ever stop procrastinating. Although junk foods have little nutritional value, they taste really good. Like junk food, I have junk activities. I enjoy these activities immensely but they do little to advance my quality of life. Television is enjoyable but it’s just junk food for my life. It fills up my time but has very low life value.

Eating enough junk food on a regular basis makes us unhealthy. If we do enough junk activities consistently, we develop low self-esteem. We can feel our life congealing around us like extra pounds added to our body. It’s a slow process. We don’t wake up one day and we’re fat much like we don’t wake up one day and have low-self esteem.

Procrastination isn’t the real issue

When we procrastinate, we avoid doing something we feel is unpleasant. However, everything I’ve ever procrastinated on I’ve completed on time. I make my deadlines. I get the results I need. It may be stressful for a short period, but short bursts of stress is healthy if spread out of over time.

The real issue is what we do when we procrastinate. For example, let’s say we have four hours to clean the house before guests come over. We know it will take 30 minutes. It’s our activities during those 3.5 hours before we clean that causes problems.

We start filling that time with fillers. Time fillers are like white bread. White bread is all calories and no nutritional value. Time filler activities suck up time without adding life value. Doing them doesn’t feel like a junk activity until we ask how has that activity improved our lives while we were procrastinating.

How procrastination really harms us

All activities fall into four categories.

Urgent/Important – Things we’ve been procrastinating that we’ve almost run out of time to do.

Not-Urgent/Important – Quality of life activities. Critical activities that have high consequences that we still have of time to get done. Stuff that gets procrastinated.

Urgent/Not-Important – Phone calls from people. Life drama that diverts our attention.

Not-Urgent/Not-Important – Time fillers. Taste great but life-fattening activities.

When the deadline for the activity we avoided comes close, we work hard in short bursts to achieve the results required or face consequences. This doesn’t cause issues unless we need do it again right away.

When INFPs procrastinate, we go into avoidance mode. We seek comfort in the Not-Important activities. It’s our reward first for our short burst of frenzied work later. Meanwhile the Not-Urgent/Important stuff that’s time sensitive starts creeping into the Urgent/Important category. So it feels like were always stressed from going from one crisis to another. Those repeated short bursts of stress-filled activity starts wearing us down day after day until we shut down.

Procrastination seeps self-esteem. Self-esteem comes from how we feel about what we do. INFPs do realize that even though we may enjoy video games, playing World of Warcraft 12 hours a day doesn’t improve the quality of our lives, it only alleviates the current quality of life. Mass consumption of time with Not-Important activities is like eating cheesecake all the time. Eventually, we stop feeling well.

Procrastinate with high quality of life activities

When we’re not doing something that has a deadline, we’re doing something else. Improving our lives comes from doing something else with a high quality of life value instead of time fillers that are all empty life calories.

Anything that falls into the Not-Urgent/Important category is something we don’t have to do later. Doing those items keeps us from procrastinating on those items later. If we fill up all our procrastination time with high quality of life activities, our self-esteem will never feel starved from lack of psychological nutrition.

Doing what’s left isn’t healthy

If you enjoy cheesecake and ice cream as much as I do, stopping makes no sense. Why stop doing something you like?

The question is how much and how often?

How much cheesecake do I really want to eat? How much television do I really want to watch? Often times, we eat what we have left in the kitchen. Sometimes, what’s left may only be condiments.

We do activities that we have left. Filling the pantry of our time means having goals we feel are worth accomplishing. It means having goals we can act upon now. Without these goals, what’s left is television and Googling things we wish we could have one day.

Rewarding doesn’t work for INFPs

Conventional wisdom tells us to reward ourselves after we’ve accomplished something or have cheat days where one day a week, we can eat whatever we like.

For INFPs, this doesn’t work. INFPs are defined by doing what we feel. If something feels good, not doing it feels like lack. It feels like denial of who we are.

This means that anything in the Not-Urgent/Important category must make us as feel as good as our time fillers. This takes reframing. Shakespeare in Hamlet said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Everything is about how we interpret it.

For me, eating vegetables doesn’t taste as good as eating cheesecake. However, the feeling I get from knowing that every day my health is improving, that I’ll be able to do more and keep up with my kids as they get older, feels just as good as the sense of decadence I get from a really good triple chocolate cheesecake.

For an INFP, anything we do that’s Not-Urgent/Important has to make as feel as good as watching television or whichever junk activity we like best. If we cannot reframe how we feel about these high quality of life activities, then we’ll always feel like we’re not being ourselves when we do these activities.

Why not stop altogether

Because it feels good. Junk activities feel good as they should. However, they shouldn’t feel better than the high quality of life activities.

This way when we choose an activity to feel time, we aren’t choosing between what feels good and what doesn’t. We are choosing between what moves us forward and what doesn’t.

Yesterday, my 6 year old daughter’s teacher told us that my daughter R. has been acting up in class. Mostly, it’s just refusing to do the current class activities.

When did this happen? I thought everything was going fine. R. can read Harry Potter and recently used “discombobulated” in a sentence which excites me to no end. So she still has to count seven plus two on her fingers. I was good at math but I don’t think it’s that big a deal if she’s not up to speed with the other kids.

At home, I drop everything when I get off work and spend time with her and her sister equally. We play whatever they want. Mom helps R. with her math homework and R. is usually done with her reading homework already. R. is pretty well behaved for a 6 year old INFP who can’t sit still for one moment. My wife and I write that off to her free spirit personality. I figured everything was okay.

Guess what? My daughter told me she hates being given extra time to do her math quizzes at school. It makes her feel stupid and she’s embarrassed that other kids can do the quizzes so much faster than her. She doesn’t like math, but he dislikes being bad at it even more. When did I forget what’s not important to me might be a big deal for her?

As INFPs, we have many areas in our life that we have to maintain whether it’s work, relationships, personal development, school, etc. If some part goes well, we put that part on autopilot while we concentrate on the areas that interest us. Autopilot is where we do the same things in any given area in order to maintain that area without having to focus our mental energies there.

So that’s what I did. I put parenting on autopilot. I came home, played with the kids, took them out to do stuff on the weekends. I gave them choices wherever I could and disciplined them when they wouldn’t do the things they had no choice about. I did it by rote. And that’s how things fall apart.

INFPs always have The Project that is consuming them at any given moment. Everything else goes into autopilot. The areas in autopilot eventually degrade to the point where we eventually have to focus our energies back in that area to get it back into our comfort zone. What we forget to realize is that, in doing so, we stunt our growth.

People grow as a whole, not in parts. We don’t go to the gym and just work out our arms for a 6 months and then switch to another part of our body. But that’s what INFPs tend to do internally. We focus on our current Project. Everything else is on auto unless it starts degrading and only then do we shift just enough focus to get things back to a comfortable level.

Unfortunately, entropy is a natural part of living. What isn’t growing is dying. So when we put things on autopilot, we’re actually letting those parts die a little. Sometimes, situations, things, relationships, those areas that we put through that roller coaster of growing and dying, just can’t be revived anymore. That’s when things fall apart.

We do a full focus shift onto the area that’s dying and isn’t reviving the way it did the other 20 times before and we can’t figure out why. All the actions we use to take to get that area back into the comfort zone isn’t working. We get a little panicky so we shift more energy there. The other areas that we had been putting energy into to just maintain are now degrading at a much faster rate. It’s just cascades from bad to worse from there.

It’s a nasty cycle and this is why it seems why things go from good to bad so suddenly for INFPs. One minute it’s great and wham, it’s bad. In truth it doesn’t happen suddenly, we just took for granted that once we got certain areas to a certain comfort level that it would stay that way.

So what now? I’ve got to stop being so obsessive about my Projects to the exclusion of other areas. I’ve always known that but knowing the answer and doing the answer are too different things. If I find a good solution, I’ll let you know. But for now, in the words of GI Joe, knowing is half the battle.

In my daily life, I play several roles: father, husband, employee, blogger, friend, etc.  Each of those roles requires a certain set of behaviors to be successful in that role.  Also, those roles are transient.  I haven’t always been a father and sometime in the future, my role as a son will pass away with my parents.

Our Identity or a better term, our Self, is not so fleeting.  We are who we are and I posit that we have always known who we are. Our Self is an amalgam of our values and beliefs.  Our roles are an external manifestation of those values and beliefs.

For some, they’ve chosen to make their primary role their identity.  Ask any random person the question, “what do you do?” and more than likely the answer will be their role as a income earner, i.e. I’m a maintenance engineer or I own my own business.  The danger in closely identifying your Identity/Self with your roles is that roles can be taken away.  Your role as an athlete might be arbitrarily taken away by a drunk driver.  Your role as a employee might be downsized because of the economy.  If we make our Roles our Identity, what happens to us if those roles are suddenly taken away?  We end up “losing” ourselves.

Also, making Role as Identity becomes a huge issue for INFPs because INFPs project their ideal/future roles into their Identity.  However, some roles are not readily available.  Not everyone can be a bestselling author or an international man/woman of mystery.  So what happens when that role we’ve so long identified with doesn’t come to fruition?  We end up feeling like failures.

Our roles are not our identity, and more importantly failure in a role is not failure of Self.  Sometimes, I’m not such a great dad.  Other days, I can’t seem to solve a problem at work and I fail as an employee. Just because we fail in a role, doesn’t mean we are a failure as a person.  How can a person fail at being who they are?  We only fail at achieving results in roles.

As we go from role to role in our daily life, we find that we have more success with some roles than others.  Also, some roles seem easier to play than others.  Why is this?

Each role requires certain behaviors, some of which may be against the INFP type preference. To be a successful employee for most jobs, we can’t show up anytime we want.  INFPs will show up on time if they have to.  INFPs can and will do many things against type preference if that role requires them to and if success in that role is important to them.

Sometimes for an INFP, certain objectives feel like two steps forward one step back because the role is so against preference that our natural tendencies sabotage the behaviors required for success.  At other times, a role seems easy because behaviors for success are closer our INFP preferences.

I think it’s Role-Identity confusion that is the main source of different results when a person takes the MBTI or its many variants multiple times. Most of these online variants are self-administered and don’t take into account that people will answer according to which ever role is dominant at the time.  I think that’s why so many people seem to hover between letters and cannot figure out if they’re J or P, or F or T.

Take for example question 69 of the Keirsey temperament sorter.  Do you prefer the (a) planned event (b) unplanned event?

For myself, in the role of the father, I prefer the planned event. My unplanned events with my young children, usually ends with bored kids getting into mischief.  In my role as a friend, I prefer the unplanned event. I’d rather go over to a friend’s place and hangout.  This is where self-directed, forced questions assessments fail because some questions leave test-takers scratching their head thinking, “well I do both.”

The inevitable reply from test-givers is “Which do you prefer more?” in regards to planned/unplanned events.  What I hear is: which do you prefer to be more successful as:  your role as a father or your role friend?  The results end up being skewed unless the test-taker can separate their Role from their Identity.

So if Role is an outward manifestation of Identity, wouldn’t answering those questions as any role give an accurate result?  I don’t think anyone wants to be a failure in any of their chosen roles.  So we end up adopting behaviors outside our preferences to be successful. The MBTI and variants assess behavior not the reasons behind those behaviors.  It doesn’t measure our want or need to be successful in a particular role.

Also, when we answer a personality inventory, we take on the role of test-taker.  For an INFP, we want our results to show our Ideal Self, to reassure and reinforce the idea that we are better than our current behaviors. Generally, people have a natural tendency to want to look good.  There is no lie scale built into any of these assessments so the results don’t take into account Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the observer effect.  The act of measuring affects the results of what’s being measured.

So how does one really know if they’re an INFP?  INFPs have a reason for being INFPs.  Some INFPs answer questionnaires, some just read the descriptions but every one of us has a reason as to why we decided to see ourselves as INFP.  For INFPs, the reason is everything.