A quick encapsulation of my INFP philosophy!

In response to an INFP who feels so scattered and is very hard on herself for not knowing how to take what she’s got and transform it into a job that she enjoys.

 

You're not alone (not sure if that's consolation or not, but it usually helps me feel better about what I perceive as my shortcomings)!  The thing is we (INFPs) are all like that.  I hear it daily on my telephone (half my work revolves around career coaching by phone) for an Employment Assistance Program provider.  One of the reasons I do this work is because I have so many INFP clients.  It's been great as, before this, I used to coach transitioning members of the military who were mostly all my polar opposites (E/ISTP & Js mostly).

I could go on and on about how this is a refrain I hear from the INF gang.  It's not something that can instantly be changed and, quite frankly, I don't want to change it.  What I love about being me is all the ideas I spawn and the learning I do as a result, which feeds my soul.

Learning is my vocation and teaching/sharing/helping others is my calling for this lifetime.

I know this isn't what most of us probably want to hear but I don't actually believe we're meant to live a "one thing"  -- a passion, a job that makes us happy for the rest of our working lives, or an interest that we stick to forever.  That's not who we are.

We get a spark of excitement and energy when we embark on a new journey of discovery and we're tireless in our quest to know all around that subject ... but we all know that, as soon as we've immersed ourselves in that new interest and digested it (and we are very good at this, so it's a job skill that we can often put to good use if it's recognized and captured by an employer), we often find we start to shift our attention to something new and shinier.  We are 'shiny object' lovers, but to me that's our spiritual GPS pinging and telling us it's time to move on to our next frontier of expansion and learning.

We're seekers of wisdom and truth and information.  We are LEARNERS and learners don't sit still.  We are constantly striving to go further and to learn more.

That IS our passion.  That IS our strength.

We are teachers as we are ALWAYS inspired to share what we learn.

And there are many ways to be teachers in this information age.  It does require some focus, I won't discount that.  And we need to guard ourselves against energy overwhelm which is tricky in our ultra-busy, technologized world.  But we CAN shut down our computers.  And we can turn off our phones. We can MAKE those hours we need to develop and learn more things that excite our curiosity and make us feel alive and bursting with energy.

Then, we need to figure out how we can take our learning and share it.

It's a winding journey -- I always picture one of those ox-bow rivers. Nothing straight line about us... no, that's for sure.  We MEANDER from one interest to another, and we need to take notice of the ones that we double back to... those are the gems we need to pull out and study. 

Over time, I believe they can help us connect the dots between our interests and a means of aligning ourselves with fulfilling and meaningful work, even if it's not something we do instantly as paid work.  But something we develop over time to create a living. 

And, I think there will always be a part of us that learns and grows outside of our work, so that part of us needs to be embraced and honored.  It's a very lucky INFP that finds a job that can morph and reinvent itself as much as is required for our Type. 

In subsequent blog posts, I'll deconstruct my own career trajectory and track how it all (somewhat miraculously) jigsawed together in a quite serendipitous and magical way...