ENTJ wiring of the mind.
Hey, it's Joel Mark Witt for Personality Hacker.
As an ENTJ, your mind is fundamentally wired differently from other personalities.
You've probably already heard that you're an extrovert, intuitive, thinker, judger,
and a lot of articles and resources focus on the behaviors that you show the world as
an ENTJ.
Behavior can be helpful, but it isn't the complete picture when figuring out your personality.
I want to give you a peek inside your mind to expose the mental wiring that makes you
an ENTJ.
Let's get started.
Your four letter code, ENTJ, gives us insight into how your mind is learning information
and making decisions.
The primary way your mind makes decisions is a mental process we've nicknamed effectiveness.
Its technical name is extroverted thinking.
When evaluating any decision, effectiveness asks the question, "What works?
or, "What gets the job done?"
It's a thinking process concerned with metrics and results, without regard to personal feelings.
Imagine a four passenger car.
If one of your mental processes could drive, it would be effectiveness.
Using this mental process puts you into flow.
You've been using it your whole life.
It's how you decide what to do each day.
If effectiveness is how you make decisions as an ENTJ, then the mental process we've
nicknamed perspectives is how you learn new information.
The technical name for perspectives is introverted intuition.
When looking at the world, perspectives is interested in finding deep insight.
It tends to ask a lot of discovery questions like, "What is the meaning of knowledge?
What are the long range implications of emerging technologies?
How are two people in an argument actually agreeing without realizing it?"
Think about that four passenger car again.
If effectiveness is in the driver's seat, then perspectives is in the front passenger
seat.
It's your co-pilot mental process and what we call your growth state.
Of course this is a four passenger car, so you also have two mental processes in the
back seat.
Sitting right behind the co-pilot is a mental process we call sensation.
Sensation is all about real-time kinetics and understanding the world through your physical
senses by being fully immersed in the here and now.
This mental process has the development of about a ten-year-old child.
Finally, behind the driver of effectiveness sits a mental process called authenticity.
We call this your blind spot, or three-year-old mental process.
authenticity asks the question, "Does this feel right to me?"
It's a feeling process concerned with how the events in your life impact you on a subjective,
emotional level.
When not used in a healthy way, authenticity can cause an ENTJ to become overly self-protective
and emotionally numb.
Notice we haven't talked about ENTJ behaviors.
Instead, I've been talking about the mental wiring of your mind.
Behaviors can give us clues into how your mind is wired, but it's far more interesting
to dive into what causes our behaviors as people.
Here at Personality Hacker, we don't talk about personality types for their own sake.
We think understanding your personality is one of the best ways to frame your personal
growth journey and we attract ENTJs who are interested in personal growth.
Next up, I want to talk about the best way to grow yourself as an ENTJ.
Remember the car model we used to show the mental wiring of your personality?
As an ENTJ, your co-pilot is the mental process called perspectives.
Its technical name is introverted intuition.
This is what we call your growth position.
It's the highest leverage point for growth in your personality.
Perspectives encourages you, as an ENTJ, to take a meta-perspective and a future pace.
It assists with big-game thinking and keeps the ENTJ from becoming too task-focused or
getting stuck on the details.
It also encourages seeing things from other people's perspectives, which means taking
other people's needs into consideration, making up for the blind spot of not seeing their
emotions.
Perspectives allows you, as an ENTJ, to slow down and go inward, seeing a big picture which
ultimately leads to more sustainability.
Growing your perspectives process can be a challenge.
Every personality type tends to avoid growing their co-pilot mental process, but here lies
the power of understanding your personality.
You will build more satisfying and intimate relationships when you embrace and show others
your inner intuitive wisdom.
As an ENTJ, your perspectives process can help you refine what's right for you.
Don't ignore the advantage of increasing the discovery of your internal world.
Start asking why questions.
Trace behaviors of yourself and others to their origin points.
Slow down and find more time for internal reflection.
When someone on your team isn't performing well, practice shifting into their perspective
and understand why they make the choices they do.
Argue both sides of a disagreement in your head and find five reasons why each side could
be valid.
Do what it takes to explore your inner world.
As an ENTJ, you'll bring your best version of yourself to the world when you go inside
your own mind and explore every perspective.
Developing perspectives makes you, as an ENTJ, insightful and ultimately, effective.
We'd love for you to keep us up to date about your journey.
One of the best places to do that is on our Facebook page, Facebook.com/PersonalityHacker,
and of course, come over to PersonalityHacker.com and leave a comment, ask a question, or take
our online personality test.
Next, I want to talk about the defensive strategies your mind uses that steal happiness from you
and, of course, what to do about it.
The word defensive.
You probably think of an emotional state or someone getting offended in the moment.
"She's acting so defensive," someone might say, but I'm not talking about emotions.
I'm using the word positionally.
As an ENTJ, you have a specific area of your mind that you defend.
As an ENTJ, that's your sensation process sitting in the back seat of your car.
It has the sophistication of a ten-year-old child, and that's okay when you use this process
to create intimacy or playfulness.
The trouble starts when you begin to rely on this ten-year-old process to avoid your
more intuitive side and you over-indulge in sensual delights.
Sensation is a seductive process for ENTJs.
It keeps you in the here and now and prevents you from having to enter your inner world,
where emotional dragons may live.
Your ten-year-old of sensation allows you to distract yourself in sensual delights,
but it can also keep you from fully experiencing your potential.
You develop far more sustainable strategies and relationships when you're willing to bring
your intuitive side forward.
If your ten-year-old overshadows your co-pilot, you'll end up in a lot of surface, one-sided
relationships, as well as distract yourself from setting and obtaining big-game goals.
Make concerted efforts to set aside time to explore your own mind, future pace, and open
yourself up to green light imagination sessions.
If you let your ten-year-old of sensation do your thinking for you, it will encourage
you to develop monkey mind, leading to impatience and dismissive attitudes.
At worst, ENTJs can even become addicts, so afraid of going deep into their own minds
that they can burn out from busyness or they can medicate through substance abuse or overindulgence
of sensory pleasures.
You need to slow down and explore your inner wisdom to prevent burnout.
Don't let your sensation process steal your happiness.
The solution is to focus on growing your perspectives process, like we've talked about before.
Now I want to hear from you.
How are you letting your ten-year-old of sensation hijack your happiness?
What are the ways you, as an ENTJ, are avoiding your inner wisdom.
You can leave a comment or take our personality test over at PersonalityHacker.com.
Next up, we'll talk about how you best show and receive love as an ENTJ.
I've got two quick lists for you today.
First, how ENTJs ask, "Do you love me?"
And second, how ENTJs show other people love.
Here are a few examples of how ENTJs ask, "Do you love me?"
Imagine an ENTJ asking these questions: Will you handle things?
Can I rely on you?
Will you make my life easier?
Can I relax knowing you're on it?
Will you support my career or personal goals and be self-sufficient?
Are you loyal?
Here are some examples of ENTJs saying, "Yes, I love you!"
Imagine an ENTJ making these statements: I will be endlessly loyal on principal.
I will educate myself on you and learn how you operate.
I will take pride in you, boasting about your accomplishments, even before my own.
I will protect you.
I choose you.
I continue to choose you.
Case closed.
As an ENTJ, you're probably nodding in agreement.
Just remember that other personalities can sometimes see these ways you show love as
controlling, distant, or unromantic.
Feel free to share with the people in your life how your mind works.
Let them know the ways you show love work for you.
If you want to go deeper into your personal development, we have tons of resources, articles,
and recordings about personality development through the lens of understanding your personality.
Come over to PersonalityHacker.com.
Next up, let's talk about where to go next in your personal growth journey as an ENTJ.
I have some action steps for you.
We've been talking about you, the ENTJ personality type.
I've already detailed the mental wiring of your mind.
We've talked about your highest leverage point for growth, and we've shed light on your defensive
strategies.
We even outlined how you give and receive love.
What's next for you as an ENTJ?
How will you launch yourself on a personal development journey that resonates with you?
Understanding that each of us have a unique personal growth path seems obvious and yet,
self-help authors and often teach a one-size-fits-all model of growth.
At Personality Hacker, it works to tailor personal growth for you as an ENTJ.
That's how we've designed our frameworks and models.
You now know the mental process to grow yourself as an ENTJ is perspectives.
The enemy of perspectives is restlessness and sensory overindulgence.
Perspectives requires patience and serenity to dive deep inside your inner wisdom.
It encourages you to focus on quality goals and achievements instead of quantity quick
hits.
Taking a meta-perspective gives you some distance to respond to the world around you instead
of merely reacting to it or judging it, so slow down when making decisions to ensure
they're sustainable.
Set up your conditions to access this mental process as much as possible.
Practice this technique by identifying a person or situation that you can't see yourself ever
condoning.
Instead of jumping to condemn the action, take a moment to really get inside the head
of that person.
How did their action make complete sense to them at the time?
Can you understand it so well you could defend it to another person?
What about a truly heinous or confusing act?
Don't focus on the act.
Focus on the mind of the person who committed it.
If you really want to deep-dive into your individual growth plan as an ENTJ, I invite
you to check out our ENTJ personal development starter kit.
You can find more information at PersonalityHacker.com.
Let me know what personal growth actions you're taking in your life and what's already worked
for you.
I'm Joel Mark Witt for Personality Hacker.
I can't wait to talk with you soon.