I waited a year before taking the time to design my blog. The first iteration took me 15 minutes to throw together from a template I found. This version, I spent roughly 60 hours designing and coding over the last 2 weeks. Even before I started design, my two questions were “so what?” followed by “who cares?”.

Amanda Linehan, an INFP who writes a self awareness blog, Look Far, wrote about asking the right questions. For me, “So what?” and “Who cares?” are my most important questions. They give me perspective. They moderate my need for validation. “So what” reminds me that even though I think I’m unique and special, the universe is under no obligation to acknowledge this in anyway.

INFP Blog is my third blog. The first two failed. I forgot that the fundamental objective of any blog is building a relationship with your reader. Anyone who says that they write blogs for themselves needs reminding that if a person wants to write something no one reads, it’s easier to keep a diary under the bed. Pen and paper have smaller learning curves than WordPress or Blogspot.

My first two blogs looked cool. I spent weeks with the design. My objective was to express myself by creating something that reflected me. If I asked myself “so what” at the start, I could have saved myself the trouble. After all the hours designing and coding those first blogs, no one read them. After the launch, I was too burnt out and too disappointed to get to the real work of building relationships.

Those failed blogs represent a bigger picture of how I formed relationships in my real life. I thought that if learned something really well and expressed myself with it, I’d be cool and people would be naturally be attracted. My self-worth would be validated by the awesomeness of my skills. Yeah, that didn’t work.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned about relationships. People don’t like us for who we are. For the most part, few really know who we are. And perhaps since we’re INFPs, most never will. People like us because of who they are when they’re around us.

A common complaint on INFP forums is how INFPs are shy and a little bit lonely because we find it difficult to meet people with whom we connect. So instead, INFPs focus on self-development. However, if our goal is finding meaningful relationships, why are we so focused on something we aren’t going to readily share with someone we don’t already know?

INFPs learn and improve on skills and knowledge that make us unique whether it’s Tarot, Vogon poetry, speaking Elvish or the MBTI. We get awesome at these skills and wouldn’t mind being recognized by the like-minded for the time and energy spent. However, the only people who recognize the dedication are others with the same interest who also spent time and energy and would also like to be recognized for their awesomeness. For me, mutual back patting has never been a solid foundation to build meaningful relationships. As for the ones who aren’t like-minded, they don’t care if we know the meaning of moons in certain Houses or about Risings and Cusps. People only care what we know once they know that we care.

The question of “so what?” takes me outside of my head. So I redesign my blog, lots of people redesign their blogs every day. What makes me doing it so special? My answer was nothing. This leads to better questions:

Will my traffic increase because I redesigned?
Nope. I have 12 years of web experience to know that’s untrue.

Will it make me feel better if the site looks prettier?
A little. I like shiny.

Will it make me feel better if the site is pretty and no one reads my site?
No

Is the reason for creating the site to make myself feel better?
No.

So what’s a good reason to spend all this effort redesigning if feeling better was the reason for the site in the first place?
Because I can’t find anything. Whenever I want to link to an old post, I have to go digging for it. If I have this much problem navigating my site, it’s probably worse for someone else.

These are the same questions that went through my head a year ago when I first created the site. I couldn’t find a good reason to spend hours on design so I put up something simple and focused on writing and building relationships instead. Now that I have a modest readership, I redesigned for usefulness to improve relationships. People are attracted to usefulness.

Yes, I could have redesigned to feel better. INFPs do that all the time. We do things to make ourselves feel better, but feeling better usually isn’t the primary purpose. Feeling better is the consolation prize so we aren’t too hurt if we fail at our primary goal. Feeling better is 2nd place. INFPs spend a lot of time and energy trying to reach 2nd place instead of focusing on our primary goals.

I could have redesigned to just express myself. Expressing for oneself is necessary and essential for INFPs. However, when we do something that only benefits ourselves, no one else cares. Doing things to make ourselves feel better falls under the same category because it only benefits us. Why should anyone else care?

Here’s a secret. Even though the new design is shiny, it’s not my preferred design style. However, the navigation is cleaner. Using serif fonts and increasing the white space make long text easier to read. Also the new layout, lets me scale the the site into a resource. I have a space for book recommendations that a reader asked for 3 months ago. In short, it’s more useful. Useful builds relationships.

Success is the achievement of a desired outcome. Whether it’s to become a best selling author or getting the world to leave you alone, success requires actions to achieve those goals. So why do some INFPs get better outcomes then others?

All MBTI preferences have strengths and weaknesses. The strengths move us two steps forward. The weaknesses bring us one step back. Successful INFPs nurture strengths and mitigate weaknesses. Nurturing strengths means improving those qualities that give us the outcomes we want. Mitigating weaknesses means finding ways to compensate for those qualities that move us from our goals.

Whatever it is we want to achieve, INFPs have four qualities that bring us closer to our goals. It’s these qualities if nurtured, bring us better outcomes.

1. INFPs are self-aware.

INFPs know when something we’re doing feels wrong. I may not know if I’m doing it right, but I definitely know if I’m doing it wrong.

Our primary cognitive function Introverted Feeling and our secondary Extroverted Intuition give INFPs an edge to self-awareness. Introverted Feeling means we make decisions about our internal world all the time. Extroverted Intuition means we make those internal world decisions based on our external sixth sense data.

For example, when I was learning a new martial art, I’d observe the black belts. Something about they way the stood, moved and looked gave me a sense of what doing the technique correctly would feel like. When I did the technique, I’d compare how I felt with how I thought it should feel. If I felt off, I’d ask the instructors if I was doing something wrong. Almost always, I was. The wrongness I felt was something basic like my center of gravity being too high or my weight shifted wrong.

Other INFPs have commented that they always know when something is off in their life, even if they don’t know why. Our self-awareness is the reason why I think INFPs learn quickly. We often know right away when we’re doing it wrong so we can correct mistakes.

Successful INFPs nurture the Introverted Feeling function by taking the next step and trusting their gut instincts enough to make changes. When INFPs take action, we know immediately if our gut instinct was right. Knowing if we were right or wrong about our instincts improves our chances of being right the next time.

One caveat: The INFP’s Introverted Feeling is great for decisions about our internal world like deciding the kind of person we want to be. We aren’t so good at decisions about our external world like deciding if someone likes us or deciding what job we want.

However, when our gut instinct is wrong, Success Quality 2 bails us out.

2. INFPs are knowledgeable or excel in at least one thing.

INFPs come off as dilettantes because we’re always trying new things. However, every INFP I know is good at at least one thing. That one thing ranges from writing to photography to programming.

We base our self-worth on that one thing. It’s our anchor in the wild seas of self-confidence. Often, the INFP self-confidence exists on shaky ground. Bad results from day-to-day living knock around our self-confidence. However when bad things happen, it’s harder to knock INFPs completely off.

INFPs have a fall back. We say, okay my life sucks, but at least I can still take a good photo. So my boyfriend/girlfriend dumped me but I’m going to write the best short story from it. That one thing we’re good at gives us an anchor to hold until the storm passes. That anchor keeps INFPs from being knocked off course when bad things happen.

I don’t know any INFPs that go on drinking benders, or sell everything and move to Tibet, or trash our rooms when things don’t work out. INFPs withdraw. INFPs do our one thing. When the storm passes, we realize we aren’t that far off course, pull up anchor and start moving again towards our goals.

Strangely enough, the best way to nurture that one good thing is to be good at another thing also. Anything that constantly bails us out suffers strain. Say you write and your writing is the constant that keeps you going during bad times, eventually that pressure to write to ease stress will leave you with a blank page. If you’re good at more than one thing, you can divide your stress, your self-worth and your need for safe harbor between multiple things.

Bad decisions happen and we can’t keep running away every time something goes bad. So what keeps INFPs from making the same bad decisions? Success Quality 3.

3. INFPs are adaptable without losing sight of our ideals.

Sometimes we get an outcome we didn’t want. Successful personalities adapt quickly.

INFPs get hurt all the time. The reason why INFPs don’t stay hurt forever is because being bored is worse than being hurt. Getting back up and risking a new hurt is more interesting than dwelling on a past hurt. Its one advantage with INFPs being bored easily.

The caveat is the addiction to getting knocked down in order to feel a new hurt. This leads to INFP drama. Unsuccessful INFPs take the same risks and get the same failures. Successful INFPs take better risks to get a better chance of success.

We nurture our adaptability by focusing on our original goals despite failure while taking different actions to produce better outcomes. We stop adapting when we go after different Rewards because we failed at getting what we wanted.

There’s nothing wrong with going from brand new goal to brand new goal, but isn’t it better to be a successful dilettante? Unsuccessful dilettantes try for new Rewards because they couldn’t get the last one. Successful dilettantes try for new rewards because they achieved their last one and realize it wasn’t really wanted they wanted.

Thankfully, INFP idealism keeps us from wandering aimlessly from goal to goal. Our ideals keeps us to our internal values. We resist becoming someone we’re not.

Keeping the same goals doesn’t mean not trying new things which is Success Quality 4.

4. INFPs are open to the new.

Life is going from one set of problems to a better set of problems. When we first move out, one of the big problems many people encounter is deciding between mac and cheese and Ramen noodles. I don’t think anyone wants to have that problem when they’re forty. You move from mac and cheese to figuring out long-term career goals to deciding how you want to grow older.

Better problems requires two steps, solving the old problem and embracing new problems. Both of which require Success Quality 4. We can’t do the same thing and expect a different result, but we end up doing the same things because we don’t know better. In order to know better, we need new information and new skills.

I don’t know a single INFP that isn’t well-read. INFPs read cross-genre. They may have a favorite, but sci-fi geek INFPs read philosophy and artists INFPs read non-fiction biographies. INFPs take in new ideas. INFPs take in new experiences whether it’s Ethiopian food or learning ballroom dancing. It’s the new that gives us perspective in figuring out better ways to solve old problems.

Even after we’ve solved the old problem, we don’t move forward until we embrace new problems. It’s comforting being able to solve the same problem over and over. However, the same problem keeps us in the same place.

When I was a teenager, living with parents was trying but safe. Dealing with how they wanted me to live my life versus how I saw it, created huge problems. I decided I would live my way and make my own mistakes so I chose different career goals and different activities.

Then I needed to make a new choice. I could I continue living with my parents, rehashing and resolving old problems about doing things their way or I could embrace new problems like moving out and figuring out if I preferred mac and cheese over Ramen noodles. So at 19, I decided the mac and cheese problem was a much better problem.

Embracing the new is scary, but we nurture our openness to the new by doing something new. Every week, I start a conversation with someone I don’t know. It’s daunting for me, but you know what’s great about the new. It’s not boring.

I’m changing. Or at least, I’m trying.

Self-help guru Tony Robbins says that change happens in an instant. It’s not some long drawn out process. It happens the moment we decide. I choose to believe him.

People decide and then take action in that direction. Someone decides to stop drinking then they take action to go to AA. Someone decides to stop living paycheck-to-paycheck then they re-evaluate their spending habits. Change happens in an instant, but results from actions require time to come to fruition.

Time enough

For INFPs, time becomes the problem. How long does it take us to decide anything?

We ask ourselves endless questions. Is whatever I want to change as bad as I think or am I just overreacting? What will this mean to me afterward? It could take years before we reach the point where enough is enough and we make decision. It’s those years of inaction that we regret later, wondering why it took us so long.

Even after we decide and start taking action, we don’t allow enough time for results to appear. We’d like to think our life is nimble, easily picked up and moved, but lives lumber like freighter ships weighted by the regrets of our past and the relationships in our present. After we turn the wheel, it takes time for that ship to actually turn. After we take action, it takes time for things to change.

INFPs are terrible at delayed gratification. We want to enjoy things now. So when we do something and don’t see immediate results, we stop taking action.

Wherever you go, there you are

Two sayings are ever-present in my head:

• You can’t do the same things and expect a different result.
• Wherever you are in life is as far as you can go with what you currently know.

If someone wants to be more comfortable in social situations, sitting in the corner, not talking to anyone like before won’t produce a different result. If someone has had a string of bad relationships, going through the same decision process in choosing who to date is not going to fix that problem.

All the crappy things that happen in our lives are results of something we do or don’t do. I drink way too much soda. I should stop, but I don’t. That’s where the second saying comes in. Where I am is as far as I can get with what I currently know. The only fix is to know more.

All the crappy people people in our lives is because we made a bad decision. Crappy people were crappy people before we met them and allowed them into our lives. We made a decision to have a relationship (friends, acquaintances, business partners, etc.) with these people. We can’t fix crappy people. We can only make better decisions.

Nothing quite like the feel of something new

Change would be easier for INFPs without the diametrically opposed forces pulling us in opposite directions. In one direction is our need for the familiar, for the dependable like friends, sources of income or a good book. In the other direction is our dislike of the routine like repetition at a job and rehashing the same conversations with friends.

To compensate we embrace the different, but we avoid the new. If we write, we start working on a different story. We don’t decide to paint our idea. If we enjoy being with friends, we convince those same friends to try different activities. We don’t find brand new people because that would be unfamiliar.

Have you noticed that you and your friends use the same catch phrases? When we spend enough time with someone, we end up picking up the same vocabulary. We also end up picking up the same ideas. Same causes mean same results.

For me, new means brand new. New is something for which I have no reference. New means an adjustment period where I suck at whatever is new. This adjustment period forces me to grow.

My process

I call this period molting. As INFPs, the hard armor we’ve built around ourselves with our ideals and beliefs to protect us from the world, does not fit anymore. We feel constricted. As we begin to re-evaluate those beliefs, it feels like shedding old skin. As with all molting creatures, we become short-tempered and irritable.

INFPs are extremely vulnerable during this stage. In order to become something new, we’ve had to let go of the ideas and ideals of what we once were. Everything we used to protect ourselves is now suspect and until we rebuild a new layer of protection, we become extra sensitive to the outside world.

The first thing I do is I stop everything that I do regularly if possible. It’s the same process as figuring out food allergies. If someone knows they’re not feeling 100% and suspects their diet, they go through a cleanse and then reintroduce foods one at a time. It’s the same way with my change process.

I do my cleanse by eliminating or restricting every activity and outside influence for a few weeks. For example, every week I go club dancing. I have since I was 21 because it keeps me sane. I haven’t gone in a month. I’ve also haven’t seen my friends either.

During molting, I monitor to see if symptoms subside. Phase 1 of molting, is about figuring out what I don’t want. Many things I do are external distractions, enjoyable distractions but they help me avoid things in my life that I don’t like. If I pause those distractions, the stuff I don’t like becomes more glaring so I have to pay attention.

After some time, I add one thing back. I started dancing again, but not at the clubs. I went to learn Blues Dancing instead. It’s not brand new, but different enough that I’m uncomfortable. Monday, I had a late night diner hangout with a new friend who I haven’t seen in weeks.

Everything I add back into my life can’t be too familiar or else I end up the same me as before. It’s also at this point I go through my 20/80 process to figure out what to get rid of. During Phase 1, I move away from stuff I don’t like. Phase 2 is where I set new goals and move towards something. I’ll have to cover that in a different post.

Last thought

My friends ask where I’ve been and I answer with a non-committal “I’ve just been busy.” They mistake it for recharging and I let them. I’m not recharging, I’m rebuilding and some of them might end up with smaller roles in my life when I’m done.

Rainer Maria Rilke in his novel The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge wrote:

What’s the use of telling anyone that I am changing? If I am changing, then surely I am no longer the person I was, and if I am something else than heretofore, then it is clear that I have no acquaintances. And to strange people, to people who do not know me, I cannot possibly write.

This, of course, was before the internet so blogs don’t count.

If things had worked out the way I wanted, I would have been Spider-Man by now. Unfortunately, radioactive spiders are to hard come by. Who knew?

Whether you’re 14 or 40, you’ve probably figured out that things don’t always go they way we want. I didn’t get the cool bike I wanted for Christmas when I was eight. I didn’t date the pretty poetess from drama class when I was sixteen. I wanted to have my first novel written by twenty-six. I wanted to be retired by now. Things didn’t work out, but this doesn’t mean I will stop wanting.

It’s good to want things. Buddhism says wanting leads to suffering. Duh. Wanting also brought the world vaccinations and the microchip. The good can’t exist without the bad. Helen Keller said it best, “The world is full of suffering, but it is full also of the overcoming of it.”

So here I am, not deliriously happy about my life, but then not unhappy either. I’m just kinda happy. That kinda happy limbo is where I find many people existing. We got some of the things we wanted, perhaps love, family, a decent job and good friends. Other things we didn’t get like becoming a superhero or a professional ballerina. So is our kinda happy limbo just the balance between the life we have and the life we think we should have?

Let’s step back and talk about having more in our life. I’m not talking about having things. I talking about the intangibles like having more meaningful relationships or having a greater sense of purpose. Having grows from being.

For example, there are people who found great job that fit them. They didn’t walk into a company and ask for a job. They learned skills. They might have gone to school. They developed a level of self-worth as protection in case, a company rejected them. First, they became someone that a company would hire.

It’s the same with friends. Relationships in our lives reflect who we are. Friends are those people who saw something in us that they liked and weren’t repulsed by the things they didn’t like. Levels of friendship are dependent on our willingness to communicate, ability to trust and capacity to connect. Having great friendships requires that we be someone who could have great friends. In order to have more than we have now, we need to be more than we are now.

People who play lotto are a great examples of this. If we want to have wealth in our life, we have to become a person who can be wealthy. That’s why half of all lottery winners lose everything within five years. They never learned to be someone who could have wealth.

That’s also why we’re kinda happy. We’re not kinda happy because of those things we wanted and didn’t get. It’s because of that person we wanted to become and didn’t quite reach yet. This goes back to Ideal Self. Our Ideal Self has that wonderful job and that once in a lifetime love. Our Ideal Self is the possibility of more than who we are now. Kinda happy means were kinda our Ideal Self.

If we stay in kinda happy mode long enough, we become unhappy because who in life plans to be kinda happy. To get from kinda happy to happy, INFPs need to move from kinda our Ideal Self to our Ideal Self. When we grow into our Ideal, we open our lives to new possibilities. It’s in this realm of possibilities where INFPs thrive.

I often hear, people should learn to be happy with who they are now. My response is, what if they suck? Should they be happy with that?

Being happy with the way we are, is the endpoint. We stop looking for the possibilities and opportunities to be more. Every time INFPs close a possibility from ourselves, we wilt a little inside. We can accept the way we are without saying I’m happy to have gotten this far at least and quitting. Accepting means taking responsibility for our current outcomes, the bad and the good.

The moment a person stops blaming things outside themselves—the system is evil, my boyfriend/girlfriend was jerk, it’s my parent’s fault—and takes responsibility, that is a new beginning. It’s the start of possibilities. It’s the start of becoming more. It’s brushing off the dirt from taking our much needed rest at the side of the road and continuing the journey to our Ideal Selves.

It’s okay to be unhappy with who you are now. That’s not a sign of failure. It’s not a sign of immaturity. As long as we take responsibility for our unhappiness, we can act towards making change. No one is ever completely unhappy with who they are, they’re just kinda happy with who they’ve become. Kinda happy doesn’t move you. All great changes a person makes starts because they were unhappy about something.

Someone asked me on Twitter how I became so knowledgeable about INFPs. The question makes me a little uncomfortable because it infers that I have some expertise with INFPs. I don’t. I’m just very knowledgeable about me as an INFP.

I read Type Talk and Please Understand Me when I was 20 and fell in love with personality psychology. I read Myers and Briggs’ Gifts Differing. I read Please Understand Me 2. That’s the extent of my formal knowledge of the MBTI, and on top of that I disagree with the books.

I’ve always disliked the various descriptions for INFP. Some of it was true some of the time. Other parts didn’t apply at all. One sentence described me incredibly accurately and the next would be way off base. I quickly decided that the MBTI types were really MBTI stereotypes. I don’t mind stereotypes. Stereotypes are generalizations and generalizations can be useful, but they have no nuances. They don’t take explain the gradations and the exceptions. The INFPs throughout my life are all very different even though we share certain common behaviors.

That’s got me to thinking over the last 20 years of why INFPs are so different. Why are some Christians and others are Wiccans? Why are some more successful in their careers than others? I wrote this blog to share those thoughts about INFPs.

I think way too much. I think about myself way too much. I think about my behaviors in relation to how it can be explained in terms of INFP so much I’m surprised I’m not catatonic and drooling. This behavior has been constant in life and it’s not healthy. So around 20, I started reading Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and others. My thoughts as I went through their programs was, “Man this would be so much easier if I was a ESTJ.”

However, like all INFPs, I picked and chose the parts that I liked and filed the rest away for later use. I’m 40 this year and being an INFP at 40 is very different than being an INFP at 20. I’ve been many INFPs in those years between.

I’ve been the Hopeless Romantic INFP who stole a Columbia St. street sign, gift-wrapped it and left it anonymously for a girl I had an unrequited crush on who was leaving for Columbia University. I’ve been the Starving Artist INFP who wanted to be writer without realizing that any novel not in the top 15 of the bestsellers list makes around $20K for 2 years worth of writing and revising. I’ve been the Reject The Norm INFP hanging out with all the other anti-establishment folk so I could feel special and different without realizing that I was just being lazy because rejecting something is so much easier than standing up for something.

At this time in my life:

1. I’ve been happily married for 13 years and counting. That’s been an incredible challenge because some INFP behaviors are not conducive to healthy relationships.
2. I work full time as a web developer for a multi-million dollar company which lets me live comfortably and travel and even though I don’t dislike my job, it’s doesn’t make me ecstatic to get up in the morning. However, no job ever has and I think it’s an INFP thing.
3. I have 2 daughters, 7 years old (INFP) and 3 years old (??TJ), both of whom I love dearly but as an INFP I’m struggling with balancing time for myself which I need as an INFP and spending quality time with them.
4. I see myself as an entrepreneur so we own real estate. However, I just lost a bunch of money selling one of our condos because I made the classic INFP mistake of being too emotionally attached to an investment and held it too long.
5. I’m happy with the life I’ve created, but at the same time I’m antsy and unsatisfied. The reason for that is that I haven’t worked towards growing into my Ideal Self for quite awhile. I’ve gotten comfortable and that’s a dangerous place to be for an INFP.

If you’ve read my last post, this is my current system. Everything I write about being an INFP is colored by that system and the Rewards I’m seeking inside that system. I take what I know about my specific INFP behaviors in certain situations and then extrapolate general behaviors that could explain the behaviors of INFPs I know.

I think that INFPs that relate to what I write are in similar systems. They’re INFPs that are happy with the lives they’ve built because they’ve worked hard to do so, but at the same time, they’re antsy and they don’t know why.

At first and this is so typically INFP, I wanted this blog for all INFPs. That was just very idealistic of me. In writing, writers develop a relationship with their readers. I see all things in terms of relationships that get created and dissolved. I also believe a major key to any lasting relationship is timing. It’s two people in the same place and time in their life’s journey deciding to go in the same direction for awhile.

This blog won’t make sense to many INFPs because the timing isn’t right. I don’t think INFPs under 28 will get it. That’s okay. The ones you don’t relate now might relate later. Have a bad break up with someone you thought was your one true love. Work for a few years at your dream job and realize that it was more fulfilling as a hobby. Spend a few years getting rejection letters from literary magazines and then get published and realize no one cares except your loved ones. Meet the people that you once belittled as sheep for keeping with the norm and realize that they’re doing the best they can just like the rest of us.

It’s those INFPs who are at the time in their lives where they’re looking for a practical and working balance between their Ideals and their current Circumstances who will relate to my thoughts because that where I am.

I have a System. It works for me. It’s still an idea in progress, but for an INFP what isn’t?

I will try to explain it briefly because I see all things through this System view.

1. The System exists. It is made up of relationships between people and things and ideas.
2. The System is made up of smaller systems like government and game shows.
3. The smaller systems are made up of Games.
4. Games have Rules. You play the Games with the Rules to get the Reward (happiness, a job, physical objects, self-improvement goals, or just wanting to be left alone are all Rewards).
5. If you don’t want the Rewards, don’t play the Games. If you don’t want to play the Games, don’t whine that you’re not getting the Reward.
6. You don’t have to play by all the Rules, but you have to learn the Rules in order to break the Rules. Breaking the Rules is necessary to maintain your individualism.
7. Rewards are not specific to a particular Game. You can choose another Game to get your Reward if you don’t like the one your currently playing.
8. Not all Rewards and not all Games are available to everyone. Sorry, but life isn’t fair. Deal with it.

Example

I like Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction novel, Into the Wild, as an example. The basic story is our fearless protagonist Christopher decides to leave middle-class America and wanders into the Alaskan wilderness. He runs out of resources, starves to death and dies weighing 67 pounds.

So Christopher goes from one system, middle-class America, to another system back country Alaska. He goes from one game to another, maybe the “White Picket Fence” Game to the “I Don’t Want To Die” Game. Perhaps, Christopher thought he was playing the “I Want To Be Free of Material Trappings” Game and that’s why he lost the “I Don’t Want To Die Game” because he was playing by the wrong Rules.

Frequently Asked

What are the Rules?

The Rules are created by those who have gotten the Reward. Some people choose to write books to teach you how to get the Reward. The Rules are any set of guidelines that get you to a particular Reward.

Can I make up my own Rules?

You don’t make up Rules. You discover Rules that let you get a Reward. Yes, new Rules exist, but discovering new Rules is time-consuming because it’s usually by trial and error. If discovering the Rules takes too much time away from actually playing, don’t be surprised if you don’t achieve your Reward.

What if I don’t like any of the Games?

Like I said, you don’t have to play. Just don’t whine when you don’t get the Reward.

Good Players vs Poor Players

Good players know what Rewards they want.
Bad players just play and wonder why they aren’t getting anywhere.

Good players learn more than one set of Rules to get to the Reward they want.
Bad players don’t think the Rules apply to them and feel slighted when they are rewarded.

Good players choose their Games. They don’t get sucked into Games by not choosing.
Bad players complain that they didn’t want to be playing in the first place, but they didn’t choose not to play and then do something about it.

Good players know when to stop playing the moment they no longer want the Reward.
Bad players think that they have no choice but to continue playing whatever crappy game they’re currently in.

Some of the Games That I’m Currently Playing

“I Don’t Want To Die” Game
Reward: not dying

Rules:
Rules for Games are system specific. For my current system, first world country, the rules are pretty simple. 1. Do something someone will pay you money for. 2. Buy food and shelter with said money. 3. If possible avoid things that will kill you like traffic accidents and sociopaths.

Some of the other Games I choose to play:

“I Don’t Want To Be Poor When I’m Old” Game
“Make Sure My Family Knows That I Love Them” Game
“Be A Good Friend” Game
“Don’t Suck At Being You” Game

All of these have Rewards. All of these have Rules. I only like some of the Rules. I don’t know all the Rules but I know enough of them to know which ones I can ignore.

INFPs and the System

INFPs that resist the System are the unhappiest.

Unhappy INFPs don’t like their system, but are unwilling to play the “Moving To a Different System” Game. They don’t like the relationships in the current environment (i.e. their relationship to the government, their relationship to society, their relationship to other people — all systems are relationships), but are unwilling to take action to move to a different system.

Unhappy INFPs don’t like the Rules for some of the Games they are forced to play like the “I Want To Eat” Game. Rules are system specific. You don’t have to work, but don’t complain when you don’t get the Reward – eating.

Unhappy INFPs think the System, the systems, the Games, the Rules are unfair. Of course, they’re unfair, but they’re unfair to everybody.

The Lesson To Be Learned From All of This

The great thing about life is that we can believe any damn thing we like. I find that INFPs more often than not choose to believe things that hinder them instead of help them.

We believe we’re not good enough because our parents taught us this by belittling us or by just ignoring us. We believe if we find the right person, everything will be better meanwhile we put our lives on hold until that magical person comes along.

Beliefs are taught. If we don’t like the ones we have, learn better ones.

Or just make them up.

If you haven’t read Part 1, you missed the other types of Tweeters.

The Reciprocal Tweeter

Tweet: @ToWhomEver I thought your new blog post was great. Here’s a link to mine.

To be fair, it’s sucks to give without getting. But that’s not how Twitter works. That’s not how relationships work. Nowhere does it say if I like you, you have to automatically like me back. Reciprocal Tweeters thinks a Rule of Reciprocation should exists. If they follow you, you should follow them. If you don’t reply when they reply, if you don’t retweet if they retweet, if you don’t comment when they comment, they’ll consider it a slight. Enough slights added up and they unfollow you.

Reciprocal Tweeters are the it’s-not-me-it’s-you people in relationships. They can’t understand how they end up dating so many jerks. What they don’t realize is that the quid pro quo approach to relationships ends up creating heavy expectations. When those expections go unmet, then it’s never them being wrong for having expectations of another person’s behavior, it’s the other person not changing into someone more suitable.

Jerks have always been jerks. It’s not their fault that they’re a jerk to you because they’re a jerk to everyone. Who’s fault is it really to decide to try to have a relationships with one in the first place?

The Common Interest Tweeter

Tweet: I’m an INFP, what about you?

Common interest tweets are the most common tweets. It could be about INFP or it could be tweets about favorite films or favorite poems. Common tweets can be associated with topic hashtags. Unfortunately, common interest is only the start of relationships.

Common Interest Tweeters are the ones that join the latest Facebook fan page and takes the latest test. They join clubs and attend social activities whether it be ballroom dancing or coed naked slam poetry readings. They hangout with buddies as much as they can, but they can’t understand why they aren’t forming more meaningful relationships.

I can talk all about INFP and geek stuff, but if that other person stalks their ex as a hobby, I don’t think the friendship will be going anywhere. Having lots of common interests doesn’t really denote compatible values. Common Interest Tweeters seem endlessly surprised that a mutual love for 19th century Romantic poetry doesn’t preclude someone from being an axe-murderer.

Relationships Begin With You

It’s not looking to meet the right people.

In Twitter, whether people follow or unfollow really starts with us. Friends, acquaintances and Twitter followers are a reflection of us because these are the people that we attract into our life.

I have so much to give to the right person is a wonderful in theory.

However, if all the baggage and all the things currently going wrong in our life leaves us a bit broken and we don’t fix it first, we’re a crappy gift. What we’re basically saying is, “hey, this doesn’t work right, but I want you to have it anyway.” Gee, thanks.

Someone who love me should love me for who I am even slightly broken is also wonderful in theory.

I have a slightly broken dryer who’s timer I doesn’t work. So I have to wait and manually turn it off. I can’t just set it and go to bed or leave the house. That’s the problem with slightly broken things. It creates an unbalance in the relationships because whatever is slightly broken requires more time and resources. Unbalanced relationships fail.

INFP is behavior. Behavior is self-similar. In other words, how you do anything is how you do everything. This applies to Twitter.

Since Twitter is a communication platform, I think INFPs believe their objective on Twitter is to share information. If you’re an INFP who thinks the end goal of Twitter is the act of sharing, you’ll soon be bored and quit.

INFPs in 3D interaction don’t share information to strangers as a goal. We don’t tell the guy who takes our money for gas that we write poetry. We don’t tell the hostess that seats us at a restaurant what we ate this morning. So why do we do this on Twitter?

Because Twitter allows INFPs a platform to form relationships.

INFPs are all about relationships. INFPs on Twitter are looking for connection. Otherwise what’s the point of telling someone that you got a new job, unless you’re looking to connect with someone kind enough to say congratulations. Twitter is a microcosm of relationships being created and dissolved at internet speed all with a click of Follow or Unfollow.

Our behavior on Twitter is quite telling of our relationships if you choose to pay attention.

The Vague Tweeter

Tweet: I’m not sure what my problem is today.

In any healthy relationship, good communication is the key. Vague tweets don’t communicate anything because there’s no context.

Vague Tweeters are the reserved ones who believe that being mysterious offsets being shy. They wait for others to initiate new relationships. Being mysterious is their defense mechanism. It’s also just another hoop that strangers have to jump through in order to get to know the “real” them.

In away-from-keyboard relationships, Vague Tweeters don’t realize that maybe the other person just doesn’t get it and never will. This is what kills most Vague Tweeter relationships where the INFP thinks their significant other doesn’t see there’s a problem when it should be obvious. Since that significant other doesn’t even recognize the problem that must mean the significant other never really understood them in the first place. So the Vague Tweeter ends the relationships. Luckily unfollows are much less complicated than break-ups.

The Esoteric Tweeter

Tweet: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Of course, no attribute to Ferris Bueller’s Day off anywhere in the tweet. It’s the lack of attribution that’s the key. INFPs use esoteric tweets ars testers and anyone who gets it, passed the test for potential follow or at least a stay from being unfollowed.

Esoteric Tweeters in daily life feel that the kiss-a-lot-of-frogs approach to relationships is for suckers. So they test people for potential relationship material. It could be references to little known indie flicks that have personal meaning. The thought behind this is that if another has seen the movie and liked it enough to remember the reference then this person is someone that shares similar sensibilities and a candidate for potential friendship.

Or that person could just have an excellent memory for pop culture trivia. This isn’t usually a one time occurrence. Esoteric Tweeters will test in various areas important to them to get a sense of that person overall.

What surprises Esoteric Tweeter is that when the other person passes their tests, that person chooses to go their own way anyway. The Esoteric Tweeter is wondering how someone can walk away from all the clear signals for compatibility after they’ve passed with flying colors.

Assume that the other person knows they’re being tested. No one likes it. It’s impolite. Most of all, testing is complicated and time-consuming. If someone had to choose between a relationship that’s easy or complicated, which do you think they’ll choose?

————————————————————————–

Part 2: Common Interest Tweeter, Reciprocal Tweeter, Relationships being with you

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.

As an INFP, I have external space that’s a physical reflection of my internal space. For some INFPs, that external space might be their writing table or a reading nook. It could be as small as a shoebox of memories to sort or as large as their entire house. For me, that external space is my home office.

Since I only get things organized to a certain point inside my head, my office has never been completely organized. I have piles. Stuff gets put away to a certain point but I’ve always had orphaned piles that have no place to go. Much like the thoughts in my head.

In my internal space, my current projects are those piles in need of organization. At any given time, I’m migrating between multiple projects, but as I go from working on one to another, they never quite get put away in my head. So as I’m working on one project, I might get an idea for something else. Those projects are like separate piles occupying my brain and sometimes the piles fall onto each other.

There’s a max limit of things that can occupy internal focus. I can shift focus between four or five current projects. Any more than that and there’s external bleed over. That’s when I can’t get all the thoughts and to do’s for each project organized in my head, and my external space starts getting messier and messier. At a certain point of physical disarray in my home office environment, I realize that I need to step back and clean my office. Somehow the act of sitting in the midst of my piles, I start to clear my head as I put piles in the trashcan, the give-away box or in their place.

I’ve been thinking about this phenomena lately and whether it derives from being an INFP or if it’s just a personal quirk. As an INFP, I don’t prioritize personal projects because they’re all important to me or I wouldn’t be doing them. They’re all what I consider “growth” project because some aspect doing the project helps me grow into my Ideal Self.

I have no problem prioritizing non-personal projects like house maintenance or my dayjob projects. So why don’t I finish my personal projects one at a time? It’s like weight training. No one goes to the gym and works out just their arms for a month until they can curl a set weight before going to the next body part.

As I get older, I’ve learned to set a time limit on how long I spend to complete milestones in a project. If I haven’t hit my targets, I go back and re-evaluate in order to figure out what results I’m really trying to achieve. If I’m not getting a project done and my office is getting messier then it’s mostly likely that even though I may be getting what I thought I wanted, I’m not getting what I really wanted so I delay and procrastinate. That re-evaluation process is where I decide if there’s a better way or a better project to get what I want.

Usually this happens after I clean my room. I guess my mom was right.