5 Self-improvement Hacks for ENTJs

ENTJs are strategic leaders who are always keen to find solutions to challenges in their workplaces and communities. While they can be charming, charismatic and unafraid to speak their minds, ENTJ personalities can also be victims of their strongest traits. 

If they don’t check themselves, ENTJs can come across as blunt, arrogant and emotionally distant. This means ENTJs can miss out on making deeper connections with people and opening themselves up to other ways of thinking and being.

To help you bring out the best parts of your ENTJ personality while minimizing the more destructive ones, here are 5 self-improvement hacks for you to try.

1. Avoid burning bridges…

It’s no secret that ENTJs can be outspoken. They have a keen eye for things that need to be fixed and their drive to implement changes as soon as they notice them can mean they speak before they think. Your helpful advice can sometimes come across as criticism and, as a result, it gets lost in hurt feelings and wounded pride. 

To help you communicate more effectively and avoid burning bridges, take time to think about the best way to frame your thoughts and advice… before you say it out loud.

Here’s are some simple tips to help you:

• Find balance: Sandwich suggestions for improvement between two pieces of positive feedback to frame your advice in a positive light.
• Be specific: Use specific examples to illustrate what could be improved to make feedback more helpful and less broad.
• Focus on the behavior: Find fault in a specific action or outcome, not the person you’re giving feedback to.

If you can learn to take a pause before giving advice, you can minimize the chances that someone will turn against you completely. It’s far better to give specific advice than to criticize someone with sweeping statements, so take a breath before you say what’s on your mind. 

After all, it’s not so much about what you say, it’s how you say it.

2. Get more in touch with your emotions…

Though ENTJs experience the full range of emotions everyone else does, they can sometimes struggle to express or process their feelings. This means there’s always a risk they’ll lash out in anger when they feel emotionally overwhelmed or hurt. 

To help you get more in touch with your emotions and improve how you handle them in difficult situations, try to label what you’re feeling. By naming your feelings and being as specific as possible, you can work out in your own mind what emotions you’re experiencing and why.

Journaling can be a really useful tool to help you clarify the mess of emotions going on inside your head. It can also be helpful to do an activity like gardening or running when you need to work through difficult emotions – anything that keeps your hands or body busy while your mind is working will make the process easier to do.

While it can be hard to understand your emotions, the more time you can devote to processing them, the better you’ll be able to cope in highly emotional situations

3. Get out of your comfort zone…

ENTJs have a classically single-minded personality that means they know what they want, what they like and how they want to approach certain tasks and challenges. But getting out of your comfort zone can be really healthy for opening you up to new experiences and ideas.

To get out of your comfort zone more every day, try making a commitment to try something new every day for a month. That could mean ordering a different kind of coffee or taking a new route on your daily walk. It could also be something more long-lasting like signing up for a new class or hobby or making the effort to reach out to people on your team you don’t normally talk to.

This simple exercise can help to expand your horizons and increase your sense of adventure, while also helping you to be more flexible and open to ideas from other people.

4. Become more tolerant of others…

ENTJs are often known for their short fuse. Patience and tolerance don’t come naturally to the ENTJ personality type.

To help you learn how to be more tolerant of others and handle your natural impatience better, try to find a mentor. Is there someone in your life who is especially good at handling other people, especially difficult characters?

If you can find a mentor who you admire and follow their lead, you can learn how to be a more tolerant and understanding leader. Reach out to the person you have in mind and ask for their advice. You can also spend time observing how they move through the world and interact with different people, especially when it comes to conflict and disagreements.

A mentor doesn’t just have to be in a work context either; you can find friendship and romantic mentors too. The idea is to find someone you trust to help you on your self-improvement journey.

5. Feel calmer and more in control…

A lot of the more obvious ENTJ blind posts – like frustration, impatience and lack of empathy – are often exacerbated by stress. When an ENTJ feels like they’re the only one fighting in their corner or working to deliver a project, they can easily get frustrated and overwhelmed.

To help you manage stress and improve yourself in the process, there are some practical tasks you can add into your daily routine. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Build in time to exercise daily – even a 30-minute walk can blow the frustration away
• Go to bed earlier to get 8 hours of sleep every night
• Focus on eating a healthy, balanced diet with plenty of whole foods
• Limit your caffeine and alcohol intake
• Set manageable targets and break bigger goals into bite-sized chunks

Ultimately, finding the best way to manage stress is a personal process. You have to find what works for you. But by focusing on the core pillars of sleep, exercise and diet, you can massively improve your body’s ability to handle stress and with it the way you interact with the people around you.

Ready to start your self-improvement journey?

ENTJs excel at goal-setting and taking a strategic approach to problems in their lives, and self-improvement is no different. Self-improvement is an important project for any ENTJ to help them be the best possible version of themselves. Try these hacks to help you build closer relationships, feel calmer and find joy in the little things.