Tag: How to Make Good Decisions

The Four Types of Love

“What is love?” is a question that has been asked throughout the ages, by philosophers, poets, and Haddaway–insert obligatory head tip here.  While that is a perfectly valid question, and you guys know how heart-eyes we are for proper definitions around here, I think instead today we’ll ask the ever so aLBoP question, “How can we use double-dichotomies and the Four Types of Information to better understand love?”  Because dichotomies are sexy, dontcha know? 😉

Conveniently, the Greeks had four main words for love.  Now, my intent is to use the Four Types of Information to help us break down love into component parts, to both understand it more fully, define it more accurately, and help us apply these four sides of love to our own lives and relationships in order to see where our relationships are succeeding, and where they might stand to improve.  As such, I might have to alter the definitions of the Greek terms somewhat from their originals.

The Four Types of Information are fundamentally equal, whereas it wasn’t the Greeks’ intent to make their four kinds of love equal, so it stands to me to fudge a bit.  But hopefully I can still do justice to what Plato, Aristotle, etc. meant by their terms.

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They’re Here: Personalized Typing Packages and COGs!!!

They’re here!!!!  Yay!!!!

The new and improved return of Personalized Typings and introducing Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks (COGs)!!!

What are COGs?
Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks or COGs, are aLBoP’s definitive guides to the 16 cognitive types.
Each one includes:

  • E vs. I
  • P vs. J
  • First and Last letter combinations
  • N vs. S
  • F vs. T
  • Middle Letter combinations
  • Each type’s unique Cognition Steps
  • Type Specializations
  • Type Angsts (including all *8* that haven’t been released yet!!)
  • Paradoxitype

And averages 10,000 words each!  That’s just under 160,000 words total :O!

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Type Specializations: What Makes *My* Type Special?

There’s an age-old outlook, put blatantly by Syndrome of The Incredibles in his Moriarty Fear, that if everyone is special, then *no one* will be.  To this longstanding catch-22, I offer the following rebuttal:  What if everyone is special in a way that is both utterly unique and utterly essential?

What if, like colors, genders or flavors, Personality Types create a beautiful cornucopia of complexity and balance, where each member contributes to the whole, an equal and necessary component, without which there would be a gaping hole?  And what if becoming special is simply a matter of owning who you are and choosing to pursue the very thing *you* love most?

These are Type Specializations.

This topic is one of my very favorite things about personality typing because it’s so wrapped up in what every type *is* and not only what every type specializes in, but what *drives* every type.  It’s easy to focus on cursory traits that may or may not come with a certain type – yes, ISTJs are usually fond of rules and yes, ENTPs often like taking risks; yes, INFPs spend a lot of time exploring inside their own heads and yes, ESFJs can often be found being great hosts and hostesses – but why?  What is that common thread that laces itself through a personality type?  What means the world to *your* personality?

Type Specializations are made up of two components, Scope and Objective. Continue reading

The Cognition Process in Stick Figures

Though I write often about cognition patterns and how thought processes differ between each of the sixteen types, I feel like I haven’t really gotten across in full what I mean.  And is there any way better to get across concepts simply and efficiently than pictures?  I think there is not.

Now, I can’t make stick people like the greats, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying.  This is just literally the best I can draw 😛  Well, pretty much…  {On an interesting side-note about XKCD, I’ve noticed webcomic writers are often IP’s, especially INP’s (the author of XKCD being very classically INP).  It makes sense to me that they would enjoy that format since IP’s focus on and love details; webcomics give them an opportunity to savor each moment and detail, rather than needing to get to the end of a plot arch, the way a J especially might.  I could also go off about IP’s liking “Magnetic Poetry” titles such as “XKCD” or “Death Cab for Cutie” but maybe some other time…}

Everyone thinks :O  It’s kind of a necessary part of being conscious.  But we don’t all do it in the same way or in the same order.  These differences in thought processes are what eventually translate into personality types.  So here, step-by-step in pictures, is the cognition process and how it works for each type. 🙂

 

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How to Make Good Decisions While Still Being You: Part 1 – Optimism, Pessimism and What We Do About It

In order to understand how people make good decisions, we need to explore *why* they make the decisions they do.  Namely, *why* do the different types have the specializations and focuses they do; how do each of us see the world and people and how do we choose to affect the world the way no one else can?

How we view the world is based on how our cognition interacts with our experiences.  Based on our cognitive patterns, two different types will interpret the same experiences quite differently.  Through those experiences, each type tends toward a different worldview.  Now I’m not talking about who you voted for or where you choose to spend your Sundays, though those choices are certainly based on your worldview and personal experiences.  No, I’m talking about optimism, pessimism and our intentions of world and self change.  I have to note that *each* of these, when healthy,  are valid and necessary ways of viewing the world so that as a society we don’t miss anything or go off wildly half-cocked.  In fact you can be sure that a broken culture is the result of one or many of the types’ unique strengths being ignored in favor of a few select types.  More on that later though.

Not just for the sake of tooting my own horn (though, as an ENTP, you know I love to 😉 ), I want to point out that you’re not going to find this information anywhere else.  I see the patterns and I share them; I don’t get them from anywhere “official” because those individual human beings who are just people too, haven’t discovered them yet.  Sometimes Tony Stark is better at inventing something in a cave than researchers in a million dollar lab with their heads up their booties could ever be.  If the “experts” want to tell the “amateurs” they’re wrong, feel free… they should just prepare to have said butts handed back to them.

Here are the graphs, because I <3 pretty graphs!

The two graphs correspond, the second being a “flipping” of the first, with each type’s place in the first graph corresponding to its place in the second. 🙂

The graph on the top is about the way each type tends to view people.

  • I’s, whose primary functions are inside their own heads, concentrate their focus on people on the whole, while E’s, whose primary functions are through taking things in from the world outside themselves, concentrate their focus on individuals.
  • F’s, who focus on the meaning of people and things, tend to be more optimistic about people.  T’s, who focus on the use of people and things, tend to be more pessimistic about people.
  • Idealistic — IF’s tend to think people on the whole are good and meaningful.  When they do feel cynical, it tends to be about individuals failing.  (“People rock!”)
  • Optimistic — EF’s tend to think individuals are good and meaningful.  When they do feel cynical, it tends to be about people on the whole failing.  (“You rock!”)
  • Pessimistic — IT’s tend to think people on the whole are bad and useless.  When they do feel optimistic, it tends to be about individuals who matter to them.  (“People suck!”)
  • Skeptical — ET’s tend to think individuals are bad and useless.  When they do feel optimistic, it tends to be about people on the whole who matter to them.  (“You suck!”)

The graph on the bottom is about what each type chooses to do about how they view people.

  • S’s, who take in the world in a linear, literal, on-the-ground way, care especially about keeping things the same and protecting what is already there, while N’s, who take in the world in a conceptual, non-linear, far-reaching way, care especially about changing things to reach their full potential.
  • J’s, who focus on the relationship between actions, consequences and principles of the way things work, specialize in the direction the world and groups are headed in.  P’s, who focus on the relationship between data, the way things are, and the motivations of individuals, specialize in exploring the world and people.
  • Game Changers — NJ’s focus on changing the world.
  • Motivators — NP’s focus on changing individuals, starting with themselves.
  • World Protectors — SJ’s focus on keeping the world the same.
  • Individualists — SP’s focus on keeping individuals the same, starting with themselves.
When we combine the two graphs, we get a unique result for each type:
  • INFJ — The Idealistic Game Changers — tend to think people on the whole are good, so they believe it’s possible to change the bad parts of the world.  (The Paladin)
  • INFP — The Idealistic Motivators — tend to think people on the whole are good, so they believe it’s possible to change the bad parts of individuals, starting with themselves.  (The Ranger)
  • ISFJ — The Idealistic World Protectors — tend to think people on the whole are good, so they desire to protect the parts of the world they love.  (The Knight)
  • ISFP — The Idealistic Individualists — tend to think people on the whole are good, so they desire to keep the parts of people they love the same.  (The Explorer)
  • ENFJ — The Optimistic Game Changers — tend to think individuals are good, so they believe it’s possible to change the bad parts of the world.  (The Veteran)
  • ENFP — The Optimistic Motivators — tend to think individuals are good, so they believe it’s possible to change the bad parts of individuals, starting with themselves.  (The Standard-Bearer)
  • ESFJ — The Optimistic World Protectors — tend to think individuals are good, so they desire to protect the parts of the world they love.  (The Cavalry)
  • ESFP — The Optimistic Individualists — tend to think individuals are good, so they desire to keep the parts of people they love the same.  (The Morale Officer)
  • INTJ — The Pessimistic Game Changers — tend to think people on the whole are bad, so they try and change the bad parts of the world.  (The Dragon)
  • INTP — The Pessimistic Motivators — tend to think people on the whole are badso they try and change the bad parts of individuals, starting with themselves.  (The Alchemist)
  • ISTJ — The Pessimistic World Protectors — tend to think people on the whole are badso they try and protect the parts of the world they love.  (The Sentinel)
  • ISTP — The Pessimistic Individualists — tend to think people on the whole are badso they try and keep the parts of people they love the same.  (The Weapons Specialist)
  • ENTJ — The Skeptical Game Changers — tend to think individuals are bad, so they try and change the bad parts of the world.  (The Crusader)
  • ENTP — The Skeptical Motivators — tend to think individuals are badso they try and change the bad parts of individuals, starting with themselves.  (The Swashbuckler)
  • ESTJ — The Skeptical World Protectors — tend to think individuals are badso they try and protect the parts of the world they love.  (The Cannon)
  • ESTP — The Skeptical Individualists — tend to think individuals are badso they try and keep the parts of people they love the same.  (The Spartan)

Each of these are healthy and necessary ways of viewing the world; it’s when a person oversimplifies people as all bad or all good on both an individual and collective level, that they start making errors in judgment.  When a person either believes that everything is fine or there is nothing worth saving, they lose perspective and become unhealthy, even if just temporarily.

As people, we do this when we are afraid that the area we specialize in and uniquely bring to the table, is in jeopardy.  Whether it’s IJ’s trying to protect what they want the world to be, EJ’s fearing their group will come to naught, IP’s feeling like the area they specialize in is meaningless or EP’s terror that who they are doesn’t matter, when we feel like everything that made our lives and the world matter to us is in danger of being lost, we hold on to extremes in positive or negative judgments to try and maintain our sanity.

As an ENTP, for example, my specialization is Individual Potential.  As I interact with the world, my cognitive functions demonstrate to me conceptually just what people can be (which suggests to me that people on the whole are good), but I also excel at character judgments, which demonstrates to me that people rarely live up to that potential (that’s where the “individuals suck” part comes in), so I figure, even though I can’t change what other people do, I can start with myself and try to be as awesome as I possibly can (try and change the bad parts of myself).

All that is good and how I’m supposed to function.  I get into trouble, however, when (usually because an individual disappoints me) I fear that everything I’ve tried to achieve of my own individual potential is all going to come to naught.  I start fearing that not only are a lot of individuals bad, but maybe there isn’t anyone in the whole world who will ever see my potential or apply what I say to themselves.  I fear I am of no use (a very T way of thinking of it) and get grumpy, mean and start making terrible decisions.

So how can we snap out of it, overcome fear and return to sanity?  How can we know what decisions to make when we’re scared?  I’ll explain in Part 2 – Playing to Your Strengths 😀

How to Make Good Decisions While Still Being You: Intro

My second semester of college, I needed a class that was a few more credit hours but nothing I looked at seemed quite right.  I was taking everything I could that semester for the major I wanted (probably the eighth major I’d settled on) and I would have been happy to just focus on classes I actually cared about, but I had a partial scholarship that required a certain number of credit hours, so I had to take something.  Rather than a fun class, I felt obligated to take something useful and my eye fell on a class called “Life Planning and Decision Making.”  I told my INFJ (who was my ex-boyfriend at the time) that I finally decided to take the class when I couldn’t decide whether or not to take the class.

While that was funny and ironic, the class was an amalgamation of bullet-point “always/never” instructions, which seemed far too over oversimplified to apply to my real life.  That, plus the depressing novel I was supposed to read for it that made me feel like life was meaningless, and the real life things I was dealing with, which the class was certainly no help with, made it so I wanted to be spending my mornings anywhere else.  I ended up having a panic attack and just stopped going to the class and flunking it because I thought if I dropped it, I’d lose my scholarship.  Say what you will about my decision not to stick with the class, but the point is, taking the class in the first place was a bad decision.
Not everyone makes decisions in the same way, nor should they.  The whole point of personality typing is realizing that we all think and process the world in different ways with different strengths.  Most “Good Decision Making” advice you can find, whether in the form of books, classes or even religions, is written from an EJ perspective.  While there is nothing wrong with EJ’s making decisions in an EJ manner, there *is* something wrong with the implication that *everyone* should make decisions their way.

Since EJ’s put action first in their cognitive process, it’s their greatest strength; understanding consequences and which action to take based on what they want the result to be.  So when EJ’s say “To be a good person, you need to take this specific action,” it often works for them because their actions are more likely to reflect their intentions.  But since the other types don’t specialize in action the same way, telling them specific action usually *doesn’t* work for them.

For IJ’s, while they’re the next best at taking action, being told what to *do* limits their ability to find nuance in the action they plan on taking, which they draw from their strength of understanding widely applicable principles.  Being told what to do specifically limits their unique ability to see the big picture and the direction actions will lead within that picture.

For P’s, their attention is supposed to be on exploring the world, rather than directing it; it’s what *makes* them Perceivers.  For IP’s, their greatest strength is understanding details and situations, drawing conclusions and knowing when they’re missing information.  That conclusion-drawing is EJ’s biggest weakness and they’re notoriously bad at knowing when they’re missing details that could potentially change their entire understanding of a situation.  An IP following strict directions of action gives up their main strength and ends up ignoring important details that only they can see.

And it’s poor little EP’s that get the biggest shaft in an EJ decision-making culture.  As understanding specific action and consequences is EP’s greatest weakness, an EP trying to follow a list of specific actions they’re supposed to take just gets confused and looks like a total idiot… as most EP’s look like these days.  One need only brave looking at YouTube comments or at the quintessential dumb teenager to see just how confused the EP’s in our culture are, because *no one* caters to their unique and non-inferior way of decision-making.

EP’s unique and foremost strength is people-exploration, meaning observing individuals as whole entities and making character judgments based on reading people’s intentions, starting with their own.  Ironically, EP’s are usually told that making character judgments is mean because often for especially TJ’s it is, because blanketing a person’s character needs to be done with extreme nuance.  But EP’s with their constant reception of information from others, *have* to determine who is a worthy source, otherwise they’ll just act more confused and stupid.  I speak from experience 😉

And in an oversimplified action-based culture, even well-intentioned EJ’s get shafted and restricted from using their own remarkable strength of knowing intrinsically which action will get them and their group where they want to be by understanding consequences; if someone has already been there and made their decisions for them, EJ’s can end up applying an action that may work in one scenario to an entirely different one where the same rules don’t apply.

So how should *you* make the best decisions for *your* unique life without neglecting *your* greatest strengths?  In a way that is entirely unique to your personality type and the way you take in and act upon the world.  I’ve broken this down into three parts, so that you can utilize all the tools you need for your own special decision-making process.  They are:

Part 2 – Playing to Your Strengths
Part 3 – How to Be Sure *You* Are Making the Right Decision

With these tools, understanding that who you are and the way you think is not only valid, but absolutely necessary and needed in the world, you can feel empowered to move the world and your own life in the direction you want.  You never have to feel trapped again.