Cognition is the result of where you naturally focus your attention, your desires, and your interests. Regardless of what your momentary desires or interests may be, each of us has certain deep, secret hopes that mean more to us than anything. While moods and opinions may change, these deepest desires are such a pure reflection of who we really are. In a world where there is so much to do, so much to experience, so much need and so many discoveries waiting to be found, we each inadvertently focus the most on some things over others. The things that we focus on most of all reflect what we want most out of life, deep down. This comes out through cognition, as the unique specialization of your cognitive type.
As the ENTP Swashbuckler, perhaps nothing is more important to you than seeing, understanding, and adapting your own self in order to become the larger-than-life person you want to be. Cognitively, you focus on the potential use (NT) that people (EP) can have, most especially yourself. This causes you to think of everything in terms of how it applies to particular, real people you know, rather than to theoretical people as a trend. What matters most to you, deep down, is observing people and their motivations in order to understand them, derive the most benefit from them, and help yourself and others become everything you want to be as a person.
This focus on seeking benefit from observation gives Swashbucklers their characteristic swagger. ENTPs live by eliciting reactions from people and even from objects, in order to see how they’ll wiggle in response. They develop complex systems of useful toys and tools as a result of seeing how the world around them reacts to new things they try. And regardless of how confident a Swashbuckler may actually feel, a little show of arrogance, irreverence, or calculated color can be a necessary tool to draw reactions out of people. Without rocking the boat, it’s hard to get reactions, and without reactions a Swashbuckler can feel almost blind. So ENTPs will do whatever works, break rules, adapt and explore, with a little sarcasm or snark thrown in as yet another tool, ever unpredictable as they constantly watch for how the world will respond. As a Swashbuckler, you may be quiet and dignified in your probing pokes, or you may find yourself poking hard and loud, yet in either case your entire specialization is about exploring reactions in order to understand and surpass the limits of what you and everyone can become and use.
None of this means that your specialization of calculated prods, and the apparent confidence that follows, comes easy for you. You have to work at it, just as much as anyone else would. The difference between you and other types is that you care to work at this, above all else. Some may say that it’s just easier for you to feel confident in any circumstance, to swing in and adapt without care for others’ opinions, but that’s not true. Healthy Swashbucklers do care intensely about others’ thoughts and opinions; that’s a side effect of observing reactions! Yet you also care enough about becoming the fullest version of you, that you’re willing to work much harder at it.
No cognitive type has it easy; every type has to work just as hard at their specialization as anyone else would have to. And every type has to deal with social pressure that tries to make them feel ashamed or embarrassed of their unique specialization. This pressure results in unhappiness and deep, internal conflict, as people feel tempted to ignore their specialization in an effort to not stand out, rock the boat, or look foolish or make anyone else uncomfortable. When we try to ignore our own deepest desires, the reflection of who we really are and really can be, we feel torn, frustrated, and unfulfilled.
This is why understanding our own cognition is so important! As we come to understand what we already wanted in the first place, we learn how to get out of our own way. We learn to let ourselves shine, rather than hiding our light. The world needs what each of us can uniquely offer. We need all the strengths of all the types; each is special at the same time, because each is special in a different way. You don’t do anyone any good when you hide your unique strength, even if you’re afraid it will make others feel uncomfortable. Let yourself be the Swashbuckler you are, swing in with dynamic flair and see how the world reacts, and do it in your own personal way. As you do, you’ll implicitly give others permission to break free of their own limitations and find their own selves with greater color and conviction.
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