Transcription
I was reading through questions that 206 INFPs asked, and this one stood out. Does our Fi function make us selfish? I know it doesn't, but I'm not able to arrive at a good conclusion to convince myself. So, are INFPs actually selfish?
I find it so funny that this person is like, "I know it's not true, but is it true?" So, introverted feeling is a judging function. It's a rational function. It's a way of making decisions through evaluating what is important, and it's introverted. So, it's what's important to us, subjectively, personally. I call it the resonating soul as a character within your mind.
Now, because it's so focused on what's important to us and our convictions, our values, our intentions, our conscience, it does seem quite selfish, and other people will call you selfish. I've been called selfish very often, and maybe it's true, but maybe it's not.
See, what we're doing is when we're making a decision that's involving somebody else, for example, um, we have to go inward to make our best decisions. We have to sort it through all of the parts of ourselves and look for this sense of harmony inside, and then, and only then, can we pass it off to our extroverted intuition, the explorer about new ideas, new possibilities, seeing things differently, springboarding ideas, fireworks of potential. We can use that to put ourselves into their position, put ourselves in their shoes, and say, "If that were me, then I would want this to happen, or I wouldn't want this to happen." And then we go back in, and we take actions based off that. We can like put ourselves in their position and feel what they're feeling, and then we we get a sense of it, and then we go back in, and we generate that feeling from within, and we create our own replicant, replicate of that, and that's how we make our best decisions.
Is that selfish? I don't think so. It is self-focused. It's something that has to happen through us internally. Does that make it bad? I don't think so. I think it'd be pretty nice for everybody in the world to just take a moment to say, "The thing that I'm doing right now to this other person, would I like that being done to me?" The golden rule. Do unto others as you would like to have done unto you. Having that little bit of self-reflection and internal processing, I think it's really helpful.
And the problem comes with, you know, other people have different approaches to making decisions. And if it doesn't go through us, and we don't have that time to reflect over it and put ourselves into the other person's shoes, then it can feel like we're only thinking about ourselves. And likely, that is kind of what's happening. There have been many moments in my life where I didn't like something didn't happen, and I didn't pass that self-reflection onto the the other person's perspective, and I didn't think from their perspective, and then I made a very poor decision. I did things that I regret now. But I've also learned from those so that I won't do them again, or won't do them as often, and so it's been a a helpful learning lesson for me that now that I can self-reflect more, then I won't do it to other people, and then it's actually uh not selfish approach. Does that make sense? Cuz I'm taking it in, I'm reflecting over it, and then I'm putting it out onto the other person and saying, "Okay, I won't do this anymore."
So, this a card guide intellect. This is an extroverted thinking and introverted thinking card, so it's a logic-focused card. But, I think most people assume that the only approach to making decisions is logic. And although intellect is important, it's not the only guide. We can bring in, and should bring in, what it means to be a person and how we would feel about making those decisions.
So, I hope that helped you convince yourself that you are a good person for having an interest in yourself and reflecting over things personally. And it's not selfish, it is self-focused, and you can take a moment to reflect over your interactions with other people and say, "Is this what they would want? Is it not what they would want? And what could I do more of to help all things in life [clears throat] be better?"
If you want more help with things like this and learning about your cognitive functions or working with a team of INFPs focused on self-development, well, you shouldn't have to do it alone. So, go to evolve.geekpsychology.com so I can help you out. See you.