- To all of you who have said,
"Oh, Frank, your room is so clean and tidy,"
I just wanted you to look at what I've got here on my desk.
(Coke Zero cans clanking)
I can't even hold them all,
that's how many I have.
"Frank, you're gonna get cancer
"from all that Coke Zero deliciousness."
Right, so on the last video, I'll link here,
we talked about INFJ depression
exacerbated
by the
Ni-Ti loop.
There's a second thing that this Ni-Ti loop can do to you,
it's doing it to me now as I'm making this video,
is Perfectionist, P... (laughs)
Perfectionist Paralysis.
Now, you've probably heard it before
that INFJs are perfectionists,
now why is that?
Well first of all, let's define perfectionist here,
because for a long time, longer than I should have,
longer than an educated man
should have gone about thinking this,
I though perfectionism just meant kind of like
oh, if I'm working on something,
I just wanna get it just right,
I wanna get it perfect, and I don't wanna
let go of it until it's just right.
Almost like being super detail-oriented
and caring a lot about what you were doing.
That is not perfectionism.
That is just wanting to do a good job.
Perfectionism, it doesn't even get you
to the point of you're working on something.
Perfectionism is, you have this idea,
and you never implement it
because you can't get it perfect.
All right, so the INFJ Perfectionist Paralysis
or P squared, if you will,
what this is, is an extreme form of perfectionism
where we never even take the first step
in doing anything,
because, in our minds, it's perfect,
and we would much rather just think about it
and think about,
"Oh, that's the perfect idea,
"man, that's so great,"
and we don't even wanna try
to put it out in the real world,
because we either know that it's not gonna be perfect,
or we're afraid that we're not gonna be able
to match what's going on up here.
So what makes the INFJ a perfectionist?
Well, it's really just that Ni-Ti loop,
but it's mostly the Ni, the Introverted Intuition.
The Introverted Intuition...
I keep putting "the" in front them,
makes me sound like an old man.
I've got the Introverted Intuition!
You can check out a video
where I go into it very much in depth,
INFJs can't see the trees for the forest,
where Introverted Intuition is looking at
what is the grand pattern behind something,
it's taking all the information
and turning it into a discernible overarching pattern,
what you might call The Big Picture.
Nis also use to project into the future,
and with startling accuracy, when it comes to us,
because INFJs have such a well developed
Introverted Intuition,
we're very good at imagining what the future could hold,
this gives us crazy good imaginations in general,
we're able to think up all kinds of new, innovative ideas,
it also makes us extremely creative,
when we use our Extroverted Feeling
to express what's going on in our Introverted Intuition.
The perfectionism comes in
because our imaginations are so good,
they far outclass our skills.
And you've probably experienced this,
where you have this great idea for something,
and it's like a perfect idea,
and then you start to approach the idea,
you just try to implement it in the real world,
and you realize,
"Ah, this isn't very good, this isn't what I wanted,
"it's not gonna be what I thought it was,"
and, "This sucks, I give up, I quit."
That basically is the Perfectionist.
That's the perfectionist in you,
you don't even want to see it through to the end
because you know you're gonna screw it up
and it's not gonna be perfect.
It's easiest to see this in the creative realm.
Well, I think I've mentioned in the channel before
that I'm a writer.
I finished the manuscript of my very first novel
in October,
I think.
Well, finished my manuscript,
that's a generous way of putting it.
I finished the first draft,
which looks like absolute garbage.
It's a dumpster fire of a manuscript.
Going through that, it was so difficult, because
the novel,
in my mind,
was perfect.
It was like, this bestseller that was going to
devastate people who read it,
because they would just be so touched,
and they would see the depths of human existence
and the frailty of life,
and then I started to write it,
and I was like,
"I am not good enough to write this."
The idea in my head is great, because it's a nebulous idea
that has a few concrete aspects to it,
but overall is not fully formed,
it's a perfect idea
because it's not real.
It was very difficult for me to get beyond that,
to just keep pushing through and saying,
"Yup, it's not perfect, it's not even good,
"but I have to keep writing it,"
because, as you've probably heard,
done is better than perfect.
Right?
For me it's the same, done is better than good?
Maybe that should be the saying.
Done is better than passable.
Because what is better, especially when it comes
to creative endeavors, what's preferable?
To have this perfect book in your head,
or to have this POS book that you've written,
but at least you wrote it and you can look at it,
and you can work on it.
What's better?
I think it's probably to have a big, fat,
steaming pile of
you-know-what,
than to have nothing.
Even with this YouTube channel, I struggle a lot,
especially in the early days I struggled a lot
with making videos.
Ironically, I'm struggling so much
with just making this video.
You're gonna see a lot of edits
because I'm tripping over my words,
and not saying things the way I want to.
When I go in to make a video, I think to myself,
"Yes, this is what I want the video to be,"
I imagine this great video
that's going to impart this wisdom that I just feel.
Meanwhile, I haven't really articulated it
very well in my brain.
You know, I haven't extroverted it at all,
it's just staying in this loop.
It's mostly Ni, but it's also going back
into the Ti a little bit to like
formulate the basic plot
of what
the video's gonna be.
Like the outline of it.
But it's difficult, because now I got to extrovert it,
if you will,
if we wanna keep with this Myers-Briggs terminology,
when I make the video I gotta get it out there,
I've got to express myself creativitely.
This perfectionism is most clearly seen
in creative endeavors, but it goes beyond that.
It can be in anything in life.
Take a relationship.
In your mind, you know what the perfect mate is,
and
you know
what it would be like,
but the thing is, you don't really know
what it would be like.
This, the thing about Introverted Intuition,
I think, this is totally unresearched
and is purely FJ's conjecture,
that Ni
generally doesn't deal too much in specifics,
it's really just dealing in big picture stuff,
and so, when it imagines something,
when it cooks up this idea, this perfect idea
of, like, for instance, the perfect mate,
the perfect person you're gonna date next,
it doesn't actually have much substance to it.
It's giving you something that you understand innately,
this big picture,
I feel like I've said "Big picture" 4000 times already,
it's giving you this thing that you understand,
this big thing that you understand, but that is actually,
on a conscious level, incomprehensible,
and not able to be articulated in a realistic way.
The Introverted Thinking is gonna try to help support that,
and it's going to try to put out
some rationality behind what the imagination is cooking up,
but it's only gonna be able to give a few bullet points,
because it's caught in the loop.
And like I said in the last video about this loop,
it's totally subjective.
There's nothing objective about it,
and you lose all perspective,
'cause it's just your mind giving itself positive feedback
in this circumstance, over and over, about
the perfect concept,
the perfect abstract concept.
But also, I think maybe the Introverted Thinking
is the culprit in, ultimately, keeping us stuck,
because the Introverted Thinking knows,
"Okay, I can't do this.
"This idea that the Introverted Intuition
"has come up with is just too good,
"and we're gonna screw it up,
"so let's, um... just maybe wait
"until we've developed a bit more skill
"so that we can do this right,
"so let's check back in 10 or 20 years,
"when you've learned how to do this better."
I'm sure you've heard hundreds of times
that you need to go out there
and make mistakes, and fail.
That the only way that you can learn and achieve
anything close to that perfection that's in your mind
is to go out and make a bunch of mistakes,
and fall far from perfection.
An artist has to make a ton of garbage
before they can get to the good stuff.
And making friends, you have to make
a bunch of mistakes in friendships
in order to learn and grow.
Unfortunately, we have to be imperfect,
and make these mistakes,
and
maybe get hurt,
maybe accidentally hurt other people.
It's messy and it's not fun.
And in the moment,
but the only way to become
a great artist, the only way to become
a great friend, or a great person,
is to go through that period
where you're just producing mistakes,
and a bunch of stuff that falls short of perfection.
I did not look this up,
so I might be butchering this quote,
but you know what?
That's better than me not showing it at all,
you've probably heard it before.
Little did I know that I was, in fact, butchering the quote.
It's from an Irish playwright,
Sam Beckett.
"Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better."
It's actually from a play he wrote
that I don't think is very popular.
That's basically how it is,
you're constantly moving towards perfection.
You're not gonna reach it necessarily,
but the only way to come close,
to come anywhere close to the perfection that's in your head
is to get over the paralysis, to make a bunch of mistakes,
to make a bunch of imperfect stuff, and get through it.
That's the only way to get the perfection, ironically.
It's to just go through the imperfection.
Thanks for watching, I really appreciate it.
Remember to check out that video
on the Ni-Ti loop and depression.
Make sure to give me a like,
subscribe if you haven't already,
and I'll see you in the next video.
(smooth music)