All the typings and observations in this post are based on definitions and information presented in the aLBoP Guided Tour 😀 So if any of it bugs you, please go read that before leaving me a grumpy comment… Or, you know what? Let’s just skip the grumpy comments! Have a nice day! <3
ESTP
The Spartan
“Time for some thrilling heroics.”
Jayne Cobb, Firefly
The ESTP Spartan is a champion of individualism and loyal to the core if you’ve won their favor, which is based on your respect and acceptance of them. The Spartan loves themselves… as well they should. They’re funny, charming and observant with an unperturbed hunger for life and adventure. They also love other people and champion others’ individuality as much as their own… almost 😉 Where ISTPs love to use their selves to experience the world; ESTPs love to use the world and others to experience the exciting thing that is their *self!*
But from a young age the combination of loving to experience life, being and planning in the moment and the desire to keep the parts of themselves they love, makes the ESTP easy to call dumb and shallow. Young ESTPs are often not fond of sitting for long periods of time, abstract concepts or being asked to change… all of which are huge factors in the Western school system as well as most places of religion. The ESTP isn’t shallow, nor are they stupid; instead they care deeply about people and groups who they feel can see the best parts of them and do not want those parts to change. As the ESTP goes through life, they have three options.
The first option, which in our society is taken more often by female ESTPs, is to change and become a part of the sea of mundanity they see around them. ESTPs who choose this path can be quite good at being unassuming, normal, non-threatening and just charming enough to make friends… but the ESTP who rejects their true self soon discovers the excitement, adventure and self-confidence they could have had is slipping away from them, leaving them feeling unsatisfied and lonely as no one sees them for who only they know they truly are.
The second option, which in our culture is taken more often by male ESTPs, is for the ESTP to resent those asking them to change and therefore insist that *every* part of them is good, even the parts they themselves don’t like. A resentful ESTP ends up bitter against people (who as EPs they naturally love observing and interacting with) and in a constant struggle to prove their self worth, even defending their mistakes as “just the way life works” or “just the way they are.” This ESTP will end up hating themselves and feeling like everything they saw and loved in themselves maybe wasn’t so great after all.
The ESTPs final option is to reject others’ poor images of them, embrace fully how much they love themselves and try to become the best version of all their favorite parts. An ESTP who has taken this final path becomes even *more* themselves because the ESTP has been honed into just what they wanted to be all along. For lack of better words… a creature of pure awesome! This is the ESTP Spartan.
The Spartan is one of my favorite types to write and watch in fiction. The confidence, vivacity and intense passion for life that Spartans exude is contagious. They can certainly be protagonists, but are often cast as side-characters because their memorable personalities and sensible wise-cracking can lighten a heavy epic’s mood. Often authors (myself included) will create an ESTP character as comic relief, only to discover their usually unnoticed inner world demands to be written and our little ESTPs overcome feelings of being unwanted, second-rate and struggling with the difference between growing up and becoming someone else. The Spartan will tell their own story… they will not be quieted.
EPs are people explorers, obsessed with people, their motivations and how they act and interact. With a T “bite” to their humor and an SP ability to notice what’s going on right in front of them with intense perception, Spartan humor is most incisive in its literalness. Get an ESTP Spartan and an ENTP Swashbuckler together in a room and their banter is likely to jump from literal to abstract and then back again, each flipping their observation of the other on its head.
Like all EPs, the Spartan will have the most difficulty knowing the right action to take based on their good intentions and observed data. ESTPs in particular will be quite comfortable with their physical action, but have a more difficult time understanding the abstract, long-term effects their actions will cause.
The Spartan is usually happy not to lead the pack. They despise being told what to do unless they deeply respect their leader (as masters of understanding intentions, they hate not doing things of their own free will and choice) and would rather not be responsible for others’ actions (their own actions are hard enough to decide on). If pushed into leading, usually by a circumstance calling their loyalty into action, the Spartan will usually say, “Hey I’m going to be out in the front doing this, follow me if you dare. It’s your life.”
A Spartan is turned to evil not when they make a wrong action; EPs are notorious for mistakes that end in “Oops!” But a Spartan goes from mistaken to villainous when they don’t care anymore what their intentions are and take action based on self-centered motives that ignore others’ good intentions in favor of their own, which they know intrinsically are wrong. This could last for five seconds or a person could choose to be a Dark Spartan the rest of their existence, it all depends on how much the ESTP lies to themselves about their own intentions. But a Spartan who is honest at heart should, with practice, revelling in the good parts of themselves and rejecting the unhealthy, have all the tools they need to choose the action that will best help them be happy.
And in fact, the Spartan’s self-confidence is not a villainous trait, as so often the culture tells them it is. Enmity is a Dark Spartan’s weapon that, although it may not look like it at first glance, is in direct conflict with a Spartan’s self-confidence. Confident Spartans don’t feel the need to pit themselves against others or ignore the intentions of others because they don’t feel the need to prove their own self-worth. The more truly self-pleased a Spartan is, the more they’ll be able to enjoy others for who they are as well.
Spartan or Dark Spartan, a strong ESTP is sure to determined, individualist and memorable.
Examples:
Male: Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek
Female: Rainbow Dash, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Villain: Gaston, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
Who are the Type Heroes? Read the intro here, and stay tuned to meet them all!
Want more information on ESTP, the Spartan? Read their Cognitive Orientation Guidebook here.
Great read. Definitely motivates me to be the spartan.