1. See this as a concrete example of attachment/detachment: don't identify yourself with a situation. The event is not you. (Except if your pessimism is so great as to direct events, then it is you, but you can change.)
2. Circles of influence and concern are rarely nested. It's just we don't even consider areas of influence where we have no concern.
3. I'm saving the link to reference the HN graphic in future.
Just wanted to add onto this with some information I've gleaned lately. My business consultant takes me through a lot of different ways of looking at personalities and right now we're on Jung.
A lot of INTJs hang out here; here are some common INTJ mental tricks:
* Holding yourself to a higher standard than those around you
* Expecting yourself to make extremely bold, large career moves
* Holding yourself to a tighter timeline than you hold others
* Expecting yourself to achieve things on an unrealistic timeline
As INTJs mature (i.e. through and past midlife), it is common for them:
* To learn to make the small, bite-size steps that can help them put their big-picture plans into action
* To learn to be easier on themselves
An INTJ in the grip of their inferior function (stress, illness, tiredness / exhaustion) will commonly:
* Binge on things that indulge their senses (from TV to loud music to porn to food to exercise)
* Get zero enjoyment out of the binging
* Take an adversarial attitude toward the outer world (so-and-so is plotting against me, etc.)
An INTJ can escape this by:
* Using their gift for thinking to plan, learn, write, chart, and strategize about ways to escape their unrealistic expectations, currently sub-optimal situation, etc.
* Remembering that what others think about you is often a result of that person's personality dynamics, rather than whatever you, (the INTJ) think the other person must be thinking about you. For example, if you think an ENFP may be plotting against you because of something he said, that probably says more about your stress levels than it does about the ENFP's disposition.
A good reference (and not just for INTJs): "Beside Ourselves," by Quenk.
I hope this can be helpful to someone. It helps me just about every day.
The Wikipedia article does not make that point, and its section on criticisms of the MBTI (which itself should be treated differently from the general scope of Jungian theory, especially after a quantitative model of Jung's theory has been published, and further developments have been suggested) jumps around so much from micro-facet to micro-facet (effectiveness of executives?) that it is nearly impossible to take as a serious exposition. I am researching this area heavily myself and have to say that the Wikipedia writeup deserves serious TLC by those who have cogent arguments that lead to conclusions like the one to which you have leaped.
The test is largely bullshit, but the function stack that underpins the MBTI concept is a good model of the way people think.
It just turns out that discovering somebody's function stack is way harder than it looks. Rather than take a test, it's best to study the functions, pay attention to how you think, and suss out how your function stack works.
Of course, the MBTI letters that are used to describe the types are misleading. You look at INTJ and think "somebody who favors introversion, intuition, thinking, and judging", and that's such a horrible oversimplification it's easy to dismiss. But if you're familiar with the function stack, then you know INTJ is code for "introverted intuition > extraverted thinking > introverted feeling > extraverted sensing" (for short: "Ni > Te > Fi > Se"), and if you know how those functions are defined, then you can actually get a decent grasp on how an INTJ thinks.
I can say that from doing a lot of introspection that my four functions are Si, Fe, Ti, and Ne. I have still yet to suss out the exact order of my functions, and that appears to change with my mood. The two most plausible orders for me are Si>Fe>Ti>Ne and Ti>Ne>Si>Fe, which would make me either ISFJ or INTP, respectively. The usual descriptions of both types resonate very strongly with me in different situations (but never at the same time), and I can't say the same about any other type. One thing to note is that people can develop their weaker functions to the point where it becomes possible to emulate a type with the same functions but in a different order (there are four such clusters consisting of four types each), so maybe I'm just good at wielding my lower functions.
Fascinating that you think you may be ISFJ or INTP. I am married to an ISFJ and have a few ISFJ friends and they are quite a bit different from my INTP friends and family members.
MBTI is missing some of the dimensions of Big Five but it has a more positive, and non-pathological look on personality. Who would want to measure his "neuroticism"? There is this "aha!" moment when you first read about your type and identify all those little quirks of behavior you thought were your own as a type thing. It's liberating in the sense that it equally accepts all the personality types as normal - this shows there is more to being a woman than ESFJ - the archetypal woman type. There are also INTP women and they too are normal. No need to feel weird about being a little different. That's what I got from MBTI.
Sorry, but other than possibly validating the existence of the intuitive trait postulated by Jung, I don't know that this information is really that helpful or valuable. :-) It may help you to expound on the concrete experiences behind your feeling. Too many annoying Facebook memes on the subject? Etc.
> It's just we don't even consider areas of influence where we have no concern.
This is one of the things that is at the heart of many arguments about "deep culture", bigotry, sexism etc -- and why people so often talk past each other. If an actor is blind to the effect of their actions, they are difficult to convince that they probably should change their actions. To them, their actions don't have any effect (or given the audience, their functions aren't as side-effect free as they think they are... ;-).
1. See this as a concrete example of attachment/detachment: don't identify yourself with a situation. The event is not you. (Except if your pessimism is so great as to direct events, then it is you, but you can change.)
2. Circles of influence and concern are rarely nested. It's just we don't even consider areas of influence where we have no concern.
3. I'm saving the link to reference the HN graphic in future.