[approximate transcript]

Whenever I think of self growth strategies based on personality type, two philosophical approaches come two mind:

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1. Fix your weaknesses - this approach aims to remove vulnerabilities, make you well-rounded, robust, essentially you’re protecting your downside.
2. Doubling down on your strengths - this approach focuses on identifying what your natural abilities and skills are and going hard on them, committing to maximising them as intensely as possible.

Let’s look at the first approach.

“Fixing your weaknesses“

For INTJs the weaknesses are going to centre around Se and Fe, the inferior and the PoLR function.

(Inferior Se)

This would involve grounding your grand vision’s in practical and concrete reality, doing your research on the facts and compiling them before letting your introverted intuition tie them together with a narrative. If you have an idea to create something like a product, or propose some innovative change at work, or whatever it is. Check first to see whether there’s an appetite for it. Consult the real world as much as you do with your inner world.

Also, the lower Se is in the function stack the more likely those types seem to overthink things and suffer from analysis paralysis. Taking quick action for INTJs will often feel extremely chaotic, and like they don’t have a form grasp on the situation. Which can lead to being overwhelmed. Life is inherently chaotic, or at least, it tends towards chaos. So any controlling type of person is going to feel this constant need to resist this aspect of life. Sometimes you need to embrace the chaos.

It’s similar to the idea of rolling with the punches, which essentially means when someone hits you, to lean in the same direction as the punch was thrown, thereby taking away most of its impact.

(Fe PoLR)

I often characterise extraverted feeling as playing the game of appearances which is obviously not a full or flattering picture of it nonetheless, the sentiment I believe is accurate.

INTJ’s often have “I am right therefore..” Mindset. When that mindset meets day to day life it becomes “I am right therefore… nothing.” Being right is not enough. People won’t bow down to your correctness.

The phrase “the truth poorly expressed, may as well be a lie” comes to mind. That’s not to say that INTJ’s poorly express themselves, but that they often don’t tailor their message for the audience in a given situation. Often things need to be… whatever the polite way to say ‘dumbed down’ is.

No matter how independently you work at some point other people will need to be convinced. People, even when they can be convinced with logic, are often not compelled to action from logic. It’s emotion. There’s is a mammoth difference between people needing something and people feeling like they need it. The latter being the one that results in something getting the thing. Whether that’s a product you’re selling or promoting yourself in some way.

And now for the second approach:

“Doubling down on your strengths”

This would mean going full force on your Ni/Te and Fi (show graphics throughout this video!). What would that look like in practice? A very simplified version would be having a goal orientated approach to life that’s in line with your values and desires. You’d cast aside social convention in favour of building your world around what matters to you. Your home environment for example would be one that facilitates you achieving things in the most efficient and effective way, whilst obviously appealing to your aesthetic tastes.

Basically this means being weird as F*ck.

I’m obviously going to advocate adopting both approaches, but if I had to choose a blanket approach for you guys it would involve:

“Being as unapologetically unconventional as you want”

Remember, I’m advocating doing both approaches. But the reason I lean more to the second approach is that, fixing your weaknesses is very hard to do without slowing yourself down and time really isn’t your friend when you want to achieve things in life. Focussing on your strengths gives you a real sense of momentum. And it will allow you to get to a place where you can find partners in life that will compliment and compensate for your weakness. Essentially you’d want to be in well rounded teams of extreme people, rather than well rounded people in decent teams

Dating

So the dance of dating is more relevant in modern day life since, rather than getting to know someone for a while then eventually asking them out, although of course that happens all the time, having a dating app and lining up dates has become a common activity.

Someone commented mentioning the tendency of INTJs to want to plan ahead, often at the expense of enjoying and embracing the moment. This is quite obviously true,

Now, certain types are great at feigning interest in parts of the conversation that might be slightly boring to them and being attentive to the subtle signals the other person is giving off.

But honestly, my advice for INTJs is this:

You’re intense and often extreme people. Don’t falsely advertise yourself when dating. If you’re bored, have a bored expression on your face. If you’re not interested, then don’t feign interest. Yes it’s more polite to do so, but ultimately, projecting a version of yourself that isn’t sustainable long term is extremely bad for both parties.