Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Know Thyself


In doing this psychiatry rotation with various extreme personalities and behaviors, I think Socrates had some serious advice there, man.

The other day I took an online version of a Myers-Briggs test
because I couldn't remember the results I got when our college counselor had us take it in high school.

INFJ
Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging

Here's what it says:

INFJs focus on possibilities, think in terms of values and come easily to decisions. The small number of this type (1 percent) is regrettable, since INFJs have unusually strong drive to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their fellow men. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people.

It is an INFJ who is likely to have visions of human events past, present, or future. If a person
demonstrates an ability to understand psychic phenomena better than most others, this person is apt to be an INFJ. Characteristically, INFJs have strong empathic abilities and can be aware of another’s emotions or intents even before that person is conscious of these. This can take the form of feeling the distress of illnesses of others to an extent, which is difficult for other types. INFJs can intuit good and evil in others, although they seldom can tell how they came to know. Subsequent events tend to bear them out, however.

INFJs are usually good students, achievers who exhibit an unostentatious creativity. They take their work seriously and enjoy academic activity. They can exhibit qualities of overperfectionism and put more into a task than perhaps is justified by the nature of the task. They generally will not be visible leaders, but will quietly exert influence behind the scenes.

INFJs are hard to get to know. They have an unusually rich inner life, but they are reserved and tend not to share their reactions except with those they trust. Because of their vulnerability through a strong facility to interject, INFJs can be hurt rather easily by others, which, perhaps, is at least one reason they tend to be private people. People who have known an INFJ for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that INFJs are inconsistent; they are very consist and value integrity. But they have convoluted, complex personalities, which sometimes puzzle even them.

INFJs like to please others and tend to contribute their own best efforts in all situations. They prefer and enjoy agreeing with others, and find conflict disagreeable and destructive. What is known, as ESP is likely found in an INFJ more than in any other types, although other types are capable of such phenomena. INFJs have vivid imaginations exercised both as memory and intuition, and this can amount to genius, resulting at time in an INFJ’s being seen as mystical. This unfettered imagination often will enable this person to compose complex and often aesthetic works of art such as music, mathematical systems, poems, plays, and novels. In a sense, the INFJ is the most poetic of all the types. Just as the ENTJ cannot not lead, so must an INFJ intuit; this capability extends to people, things, and often events,
taking the form of visions, episodes of foreknowledge, premonitions, auditory and visual images of things to come. INFJs can have uncanny communications with certain individuals at a distance.

(Bold is my doing.)
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What do you think?
Want to take it?
Here
Tell me what you get!

And here are some links for descriptions:
Here, here, and here.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Taking it Easy


Sorry I haven't been posting,
but I decided December is going to be
'take it easy on myself' month.

It's snowing here.
Flakes are shuffling around, spinning through the air,
and dusting off the steep shingles of my neighbors house.
And I slept in,
so that I can sit here with my oatmeal, look out the window, and enjoy this sight,
instead of rushing off to class sleepy and grumpy at 7am.

Yesterday I was supposed to have a study group with friends,
but instead
we made a crazy dinner of eggs, rice, biscuits, and roasted vegetables,
put on pajama pants, cuddled up on the couch, buried ourselves under blankets
and watched
White Christmas.

Don't worry, Mom,
I'm still studying and getting my work done.

I'm just not pushing myself so much.
I am, like most of you I'm sure,
over-committed
and
my harshest critic.
It's the American way.

Dropping one ball that you're juggling
doesn't just mean you've dropped one ball,
it means you've ruined the entire act
and probably the entire show.
Or so we think.

Something I've realized though, usually no one even notices you dropped a ball.

So I've been asking myself why I'm juggling so many balls in the first place, and
changing my criteria for what falls in the 'needs to get done' category.
(Hint: it's a lot smaller category than you think.)

I've also decided
instead of adding frenzy to the Holiday season
with finding the perfect gifts for all my friends and family,
and doing all the things I think I'm supposed to do (decorate, make cookies, get a tree, etc.)
maybe I'll just
relax and
make eggs and rice
and watch White Christmas with them,
because
that's what it's all about right?
Relationships. Connection. Community. Pajama pants.

And maybe I'll extend this month into a New Year's Resolution,
because we should all take it easier on ourselves
and really it feels pretty damn good to spend my time doing the things I value.
Like eating oatmeal and watching snow fall.

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"Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels
Drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
and take it easy" -The Eagles