When you think about the qualities needed for successful money management, you probably associate those traits with the Sensing-Thinking personalities. It’s easy to see how those personalities—i.e., ISTJ, ISTP, ESTJ, and ESTP, with their facility for facts, data, and logic—can easily master finances.
Within every INTP lies the spark of innovation, a deep level of creative brilliance that allows you to think up new and better ideas. But your muse is quixotic. What happens when she's sleeping? What if the ideas and inspiration keep slipping away from reach, no matter how desperately you try to grasp them?
Learning your type for the first time can be exciting. Whether through an online test you took for fun, or as a mandatory part of your job, discovering which of the sixteen personality types you match can create a feeling of self-understanding that you’ve never experienced before. It might explain your hobbies, the way you interact with others, and why you are your exact brand of weird. The dark side of learning your personality type is that it can also give you a lot of excuses.
ENFPs have such wonderfully upbeat qualities. The exuberance! The optimism! The compulsive exploration! You're an unstoppable force of mountain-moving productivity and creation... if only you could find a little focus.
When it comes to raising well-behaved children, one size does not fit all. A simple "no" might be enough to get your rule-abiding, people-pleasing son to lift his hand out of the cookie jar. But if your strong-willed daughter enjoys pushing boundaries, then you are going to need a different approach.
Intuitives don't have trouble formulating thoughts and ideas, but often struggle to articulate the concepts that are so clearly defined in their mind. It's to do with the fact that you think in an abstract, seemingly random way. Intuition trains you to make sense of these thoughts without examining every detail. But details matter when you are trying to explain your ideas. Overlooking a word or feature can cause complete misunderstanding - as if you are speaking a different language.
If you’ve been keeping up with this series, I hope you’re starting to feel like an expert in the theory of cognitive functions. At this point, you’ve learned the basics of the theory and the arguments supporting it. Supporters of the theory of cognitive functions argue that they allow you to understand why people act out of character in times of stress, and they can help you to determine which type you are.
Have you always believed in a higher spiritual power; a being who, for some reason we can’t really fathom, created and loves us and will provide a glorious home for our souls after we die? Perhaps you feel that you are seeing this being’s handiwork every time you look at an intricate flower or snowflake, or see breathtaking mountain scenery. To you it makes perfectly logical sense that the existence of such marvels in our world is evidence of a powerful, loving creator who is responsible for them.
While the theory of cognitive functions has no shortage of critics, it also has many adamant supporters. In the second part of this series, we’re looking at some of the arguments in favor of the theory of cognitive functions. And if you don’t know what these “cognitive functions” that I’m going on about are, you can check out the first post in this series, where I give a basic overview of the theory.
I can count on one hand the number of times I've cried. The first was when a kid called Robert punched me in the teeth. I was nine years old and the crying completely rattled me. It's when I realized that emotions were not fragile but borne of righteous indignation.
