- What's up, everybody?
We're gonna talk about the seven worst weaknesses
of the INFJ today.
Have you ever wondered about that?
Well, it's good you clicked on this video
because I'm gonna to give you the answers.
In preparation for this video,
I took a gander at "Gifts Differing,"
and a lot of people ask me, "What's a good book to read?
"I actually want to read a book about Myers Briggs
"to learn about it."
"Gifts Differing" is the one you want.
It's a great overview of everything, all the types,
how it all works, what it all means.
Very interesting, link is in the, (stammers)
I've said that phrase like thousands of times
and I still get tripped up.
It's in the description. (chuckles)
If you want to pick it up for yourself.
Oh, and it's worth noting, by the way,
that a lot of these are weaknesses for INTJs too,
because INFJs and INTJs are extremely similar.
They both have introverted intuition
as their dominant function
and that's where most of these weaknesses come from.
The irony is the weaknesses come from the strength.
Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin.
INFJ weakness number one is
that they can get easily detached from reality,
and this happens because they are easily sucked
into their own inner world.
Introverted intuition is a very deep,
rich inner world of, you could call it imagination,
but it's not quite that.
It's really like finding connections between things,
guessing at the meaning of how things come together.
It's very abstract.
In a way it's like trying to look at the whole world
and bring it down into one meaning, one pattern.
Where's it all going?
And INFJ is can, for sure, be in the present moment
for a little while,
but it's not long before they just sink back
into their own brain and the intuition goes into overdrive
and they become detached
from what's actually happening around them.
And it can be good sometimes,
because if an INFJ gets really,
if they have a strong inner vision,
they can be very determined
and detached from their reality in a good way,
because it allows them to focus on one thing,
but a lot of times that can be a weakness as well,
because life goes on. (chuckles)
Life doesn't stop because you wanted to focus on something.
Number two is that INFJs are too reliant
on inspiration, in a sense,
and they don't want to do tedious work.
They don't want to do rote routine grunt work.
This is because INFJs like to over plan stuff.
And they over plan because they're trying to avoid the work.
So they're like, if I can just think about, you know,
if I can get an inspiration instead of like,
just immediately starting to work toward it,
or even working without full inspiration,
I have to wait for it all to come together in my mind,
for the intuition to put it all together,
to piece it all together.
So as an example,
let's say that we have an INFJ who's a novelist.
Now novel writing is tedious.
You have to like write a lot of, (laughs)
a lot of words, and it takes a while.
So don't take these examples totally literally,
like an INFJ novelist could do whatever,
but just to illustrate this particular point,
an INFJ who's trying to write a novel might wait years,
have the idea and be like,
"That's a great idea, I'm inspired,"
but then just let that stew,
let that marinate for a long time before ever writing it,
because they don't want to start doing something
if it's gonna be a lot of kind of grunt work,
where they're grinding to figure things out along the way.
So they'll wait until it all comes together
and is galvanized, if you will,
and then just write it as fast as possible
once it's fully formed in their mind.
A lot of it is because they don't want to be surprised,
the INFJs, by tedious things along the way
and they don't want to have to deal with it,
so they wanna work it out in advance to skip over that.
You'll notice intuitives like to skip over things.
(chuckles) That's sort of like, their thing.
Number three is that INFJs can be stubborn.
This is one that doesn't get brought up
a whole heck of a lot.
Here's how the stubbornness can play out,
is that INFJs will create kind of a vision
where they see things going.
Introverted intuition is very focused on the future,
because it's trying to guess what's gonna happen next
and project and be like,
"This is how things have gone in the past,
"this is the pattern.
"this is how it's gonna go in the future," et cetera,
so when they have that particular intuition,
that vision of where things are going,
they don't want to listen
to other people who contradict that.
And that in part is because it's introverted,
so it's subjective.
Like things that are introverted are focused inward
on the self, and so INFJs have a certain loyalty to that.
They don't want to betray their own inner guidance
where the intuition is saying things are going,
and there's also a fear aspect because if someone else says,
"Oh, well, it's actually going this other way.
"You should do this other thing,"
the INJF will be like, going back to the last point,
INFJs will be like,
"I worked it out for myself to skip over this,
"the tedium and the chaos that could come about
"from not planning enough,
"so if I go with this other person's thing,
"then I'm opening myself up to that."
And so that can be a weakness though,
because INFJs aren't always right.
I think that's the common misconception.
The INFJs, I see it in the comments.
It's like, "Oh, my intuition told me this."
Intuition, it doesn't mean it's right.
It just means that, it's really a guess.
Intuition might be predictive.
That doesn't mean it's right.
Nostradamus predicted stuff.
He wasn't right.
Or was he?
Why don't we pause briefly to see if YouTube
would like to show a commercial.
Thanks for sitting through that,
and if you're enjoying yourself,
hit the like button and consider subscribing
if you haven't done so already.
I'm just gonna leave it in.
I'm gonna leave in me stumbling over words
and struggling with the English language.
The number four weakness of the INFJ
is that they can struggle to adequately express themselves.
This can be, in general, an NF type thing.
All the NF types will struggle a bit to be understood,
and that is because NF, the NF way of communicating,
it doesn't matter what NF type you are,
and you can hear it when you listen for it,
it's like the opposite of clear.
Whenever you hear someone talking about something
and you can tell they know what they mean
and you can sort of figure it out.
Well, here's a good example, me. (chuckles)
Watch a lot of my videos
where I'm talking about INFJ stuff,
there's like a obvious lack of concrete examples of things,
and I worked in this script in particular,
in this video, to give some examples
so that I could like, fight that lack of clarity.
Examples are good.
NFs tend not to give them.
They talk in abstract.
They talk about feelings that, you know,
so it's not clear, factual.
It's not factual.
It's not logical.
It doesn't make sense to a lot of people.
The other side of that is that because introverted intuition
in particular is subjective,
that means it might not make sense to other people,
even if they could explain it in a way it might not,
what an INFJ thinks,
like what their intuition is telling them
might not make sense to anyone else except that INFJ.
Might not even make sense to other INFJs.
So expressing themselves and what's going on inside,
that's a major weakness.
Number five is that INFJs struggle
to enjoy the present moment, to live in the now,
and it's because, as I mentioned before,
intuition is always projecting out into the future.
Intuition is trying to guess what happens next?
The INFJs see the world as
not so much what's happening now, but what will happen.
And so instead of enjoying the present moment, right now,
they're projecting, you know,
five years into the future or whatever.
That one's pretty self explanatory,
so I think we'll just move on.
I think a lot of humans generally have issues
with being in the present, but INFJs in particular.
Number six is that INFJs can be overly cautious,
and a lot of times this goes back
to that planning I talked about,
and this is because they feel the responsibility
to fully comprehend something before they undertake it.
And this could be something big.
It could be something small too.
This cautiousness comes from what I mentioned before
of not wanting to be surprised.
INFJs don't like to be surprised
by stuff coming out of the woodwork,
of details they didn't expect.
So, like I said, it could be a big thing,
or it could be a small thing,
like an INFJ, here's a silly example,
if they're going to a new restaurant,
might spend a lot of time looking up reviews
to see how other people felt about their experience,
might look at the menu to make sure that they, you know,
they comprehend everything there
and don't have to read a menu on the spot, (chuckles)
might research where they're gonna park,
like all this stuff to over plan before even getting there.
And the number seven one,
which is big and which is, you know,
the kind of thing that is gonna catch
a lot of people off guard, and I hinted at it before,
that when an INFJ's intuition is wrong,
it really will catch them off guard
and could really bite them in the butt.
So intuitives like to jump ahead all the time.
They like to guess at what's gonna happen
rather than following the actual sequence of events
and INFJs and INTJs are the worst, I think.
Well, you could argue other types too,
but they're pretty bad because it's their dominant function.
So they're always,
they're relying on that way more than they're relying
on looking at the facts and what's actually happened.
They're like, "Oh, I get this,
"I'm jumping ahead to the end."
And like I said before, the intuition isn't always right.
It's right enough that they rely on it,
and because it's their dominant function,
the INFJs will get a little bit cocky.
There'll be like,
"I got this, I do this all the time.
"I don't even think about it."
And then one day they guess wrong.
They jump ahead,
but they didn't anticipate some thing happening
or something comes out of nowhere.
Some chaos happens and they're like, it causes big problems.
There are other types,
if you contrast this with say an ENFJ
who isn't dominant with introverted intuition,
but has it as their second function, they still will plan,
they still will guess, and jump ahead,
but when something kind of comes out of nowhere
and surprises them and they guess wrong, they are easier.
They have an easier time with adjusting on the fly
and handling it, and it's like,
"Okay, that was not so great, but I dealt with it.
"I'm not too afraid of that happening again,
"let's just keep going."
INFJs, though, that'll like wipe them out.
It's close to being traumatizing.
It's gonna make you not wanna do it again.
It's gonna make you think what,
your whole world is gonna come crashing down, in a sense.
This is the biggest piece of advice I have
for INFJs and INTJs, is realize your intuition,
that's something that you're relying on a lot
and it's not always going to pan out for you,
so you need to be able to handle the present moment,
the everyday details, the facts,
reality in the concrete physical world.
You have to deal, learn to deal with surprises
and going into situations with a plan that isn't, you know,
obsessively thought through.
One more thing, if you didn't know,
I have an email list where I send out
a word of the week on Monday mornings.
Just something for you to chew on,
maybe give you a little inspiration, feed that intuition,
help you get closer to achieving your goals.
The link is INFJ.me/fun, because we have fun over there.
It's also a great way, if you sign up for the emails,
to get information on asking me questions directly
and get my personal opinion
on stuff about personality type, et cetera.
Thanks for watching.
Till next time, stay cool and attractive.