I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs and Keirsey tests over and over again, through the years, and an interesting thing actually happened, from age 30 to 40: the results changed. I went from an ENFP to an INFP — the only difference being from Extravert to Introvert — but with a whole lot of subtle differences.
“On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, INFP is a rare personality type, found in only about one percent of the general population. Yet, of the possible 16 types, it is the one most frequently found for gifted people. This scarcity, coupled with their extreme intelligence, renders them seldom understood and, thus, rarely validated in relationships. The following material is based on qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with eight highly-gifted INFP adults.”
— INFP Personality Type in Gifted People
Well, I dunno. If I’m gifted, here’s hoping it comes with a receipt, because sometimes I’d like very much to send it all back. Or, well, at least parts of it. The ENFP I used to be, the Keirsey Champion Idealist type, is the bubbly, zany, anything can happen and I can make it happen girl who manifested thousands of life experiences just through willing them.
The INFP Healer Idealist is the melancholy, loyal dreamer monk woman, often rooting though her internals like so many antiques at a rummage sale. Other days, she sets out to move, shake and change the world, an archetypical explorer.
More than any other personality type, we’re focused on making the world a better place “by searching out the answers to what life really means and then culminating these findings into a clear purpose and active ways to better serve humanity. Based on these findings, they re-evaluate the path they are traveling, deciding whether to keep going straight or change course; always with the ultimate goal in mind—the good of all. Intuition, idealism, and perfectionism are the drivers that help them achieve goals to that end.”
Both temperments are rare in this world, with ENFP’s something like 2-4 percent of the population. We’re not valued in business, where the ESTJ’s get all the action: they’re like bulls, sucking up all the oxygen, or oxen pulling the company cart to success. Dreaming, possibilities, writing and intuition aren’t high corporate priorities. In fact, they’re not valued much in American society at all, where the other temperment types really dominate.
Fortunately, we are good at what we do, and no other personality types can do it but us. Look at the title of our types: Champions and Healers, both subsets of the Idealist category. In our own boisterous (and quiet) ways, we change the world and contribute to the lives of those around us through raising them up high enough to see their own potential. Through believing in things they cannot see and sharing those things with people we trust, who trust us, so that they may catch a glimpse of what is foreign to their world, including all the possibilities. Through acceptance, reliance on feeling and emotion, seeing potential in everything, having a willingness to take on others’ pain and through perspectives that are unique, unable to be replicated at will by others. Through making a difference in individual lives, rather than in a corporate setting or raising ourselves up in the material world, INFP’s feel they’ve made a difference in the world.
That seems like a gift, to me. But it comes with a whole lot of extraneous, difficult packaging. Sort of like a diamond wrapped in barbed wire and razor blades.
