- I get a lot of people who ask me, "Frank,
"how can I be sure if I'm INFJ?"
Sometimes they'll also ask about another type,
"How can I be sure if I'm an INTP?"
Or, "How do I know if I'm," this type or this type.
"How can I be sure, please tell me."
So I would say to be sure you're an INFJ
do you wear black often?
I'm just kidding.
The people who ask this question seem
to fall into two camps.
There's the one camp that is
just desperate, they seem like,
I'm like going crazy, I'm freaking out,
that I don't know what type I am for sure,
I just need to know, ah!
Those people need to calm down.
The other camp are people who,
they just, they haven't learned a ton about typology
but they're interested.
Maybe they just find it difficult to understand
and they know that they can't see themselves clearly,
so they're like, "Just give me the answer.
"Just tell me what type I am so I can move on with my life."
'Cause they know it's just a tool to be used
and they're not freaking out about it.
I think what you have to realize is
your type is not going to like solve all your problems.
It's great to know for self improvement purposes
what your type is.
But it's not the cheat code that unlocks everything.
But this isn't to discourage you and say give up.
This is just to say calm down,
start by calming down, that's step one.
Step two is realize that you're gonna have
to stay calm for a while.
Because this is a long process.
Sure, there are ways to get easy answers.
There are plenty of people out there who
will give you their opinion on what type you are.
There are plenty of tests out there.
And I guess if you wanted to, you could just do a bunch
of those and see what type comes up the most.
But in the end, you're only getting someone's opinion.
Or a test's opinion based on the
the way that it was programmed to
tabulate the answers that you put in.
Typology is, in my view,
and typing people
is something where it takes a long time
and it's a, it's more of an art form in some ways
than any kind of science.
There's a lot of interpretation,
there's a lot of getting to know someone on a deep level.
And when you're talking about yourself,
you've gotta get to know yourself.
And you might think, "I know myself very well."
Maybe you do, but I think more often than not,
there are parts of us that are hidden
that we don't even know about.
Parts of us that maybe other people see very clearly
and we don't.
We like to hide things from ourselves so that we can live
with ourselves and just get through life.
Before we continue, let's stop and support this channel
with a quick commercial break.
So what you need to do is you need to commit
to a longer process of getting to know yourself.
How do you get to know yourself?
Well, train yourself to be able
to stop every once in a while
and look back at what you're doing maybe in the moment
or right afterwards and be like,
what's going through my mind?
How am I making this decision?
What am I looking at?
Why am I reacting negatively to this thing?
Why am I reacting positively to this thing?
Why is that when I lose my keys
I fly into a rage but when my
wife loses her keys,
I don't have a wife but the hypothetical wife,
when she loses her keys she's like, "Ah, whatever,
"I'll find 'em."
That could be something that you stock away as
this is something about me that for some reason I
fly into a rage at something small.
That's not real, that's not the appropriate response
objectively it's just something I do.
Or why do I get so excited when I get to
tell everyone else what to do?
When I get to plan a party and give everyone jobs
and tell Jerry that he's in charge of the music?
Why does that pump me up whereas
my friend over here, he hates it when that happens?
That's an insight into your personality.
You're getting to know yourself 'cause a lot of times
we just assume everyone's just like us.
Everyone freaks out when they lose their keys,
everyone loves bossing people around.
But no, there are a lot of people
who will relate to that because they have a similarity
in their personality type to you,
but not everyone's the same.
So you start catching yourself on those things
and some of them might surprise you.
You might all of a sudden realize wow, I'm really uptight
about XYZ and I thought I was pretty laid-back about it.
But clearly not and it's not normal for me
to be so uptight about it.
So you start looking at those things.
And then on the other side of it, you have to learn
about typology and that is a long process.
Because first of all, it's not like a simple entryway
into typology, you don't just,
one does not simply learn typology.
Because it's not like when you got to college to learn
biology or something where everyone's in agreement
on what everything is.
You could go to several different typology people
and get a bunch of different definitions of things
that use the same terms that makes it confusing.
So what you need to do is you need to pick one
particular system or whatever that makes sense to you.
Learn it, and then as you learn
a particular system and set of definitions and stuff,
you'll start to realize that you are creating your own
understanding of it.
Because what we're doing is we're seeing patterns
in humanity and then labeling them.
It's really difficult to do, it's weird,
it's not always straightforward.
It's a lot of interpretation.
And so it requires you to do a lot of
observation and figuring it out on your own.
One of the things you can't do during this time
is use yourself as a reference point.
Which is what I see people do all the time.
And it's like, not good.
Don't be like, well I'm like this,
and this person is like this, therefore, they're different
than me and their type.
They might be the same, and you just
don't see how you act like them.
You see what I mean?
So stay outwardly focused during this time
and if you remain calm and you're learning
you, after a while, will be able to see yourself
more clearly and understand oh, I can see the patterns.
I can sort of see the patterns.
You have to turn quickly to see them.
You see them out of the corner of your eye and you turn,
see it for a second.
I mean practical ways to do it is you could just
make a bunch of videos and put 'em on YouTube
or make podcasts or even just journal.
Something where you have a record of yourself talking
or writing for long periods of time.
Where you just let yourself go.
And then if you come back to it months later
after you've kind of forgotten what you talked about
it can be very eyeopening because you start
to view yourself as a different person
in that circumstance.
The other thing is, it's very difficult
in seeing yourself clearly because
things stand out to us more that we don't
do as often and so
a lot of time, you do everything, right?
Even if you are an intuitive type,
you do sensing.
Even you are a thinking type, you do feeling.
You do it, right?
We all use all of it,
but we're just talking about preferences.
Do you prefer one over the other?
And I think this is a big misunderstanding,
it's like people think oh if I'm intuitive,
I don't use sensing, I'm only abstract.
I only talk in metaphors and deep
conceptual images.
If you are, let's say an INFJ,
when you use the sensing and the thinking,
that stands out to you because it's not your
usual preference.
It's like if, for instance, you
bought fast food for dinner every night all the time,
but then one day you bought food from the grocery store
and made this really get recipe, this very fancy dinner,
and then you go around telling people yeah, I'm a cook.
Yeah, I cook, yeah.
Even though you cooked one day out of the last month
and the rest of the time you just bought fast food.
It's the same way when we're analyzing our own behavior,
the stuff that we do that was a little bit more effort
and that we felt prouder, more prouder about doing,
that sticks out to us.
When you go back into autopilot doing your main functions,
your top ones, you don't even realize it
'cause it's boring, you're like, who cares about this?
I do it all the time, this is stupid.
It's almost like you don't respect it.
Even though that's what you feel like is the best thing
to be doing.
But it's like eh, everyone does this, so what?
You see what I'm saying?
That's why it's so hard to catch yourself.
So you have to kind of like,
you have to calm down and that's why I started with that
because if you're keyed up
you're gonna just want to settle things fast
and you're just not gonna see things accurately.
You're gonna point to the wrong things and say that's me.
I gotta figure this out.
Frank you click-baited us, you said,
you said how can I know I'm a (grumbles).
Okay, anyway. (laughs)
Thanks for watching, and I appreciate it.
Check out some other videos over here if you're not
very angry with me and smash like
to show that you stuck your thumb up at this.
And until next time, oh, subscribe.
Stay cool and attractive.