This week on my MBTI Facebook Page, I asked each type to share a personal epiphany they’d had that had significantly impacted their lives. Here’s what 27 ENFPs had to say about the particular piece of wisdom that turned things around for them.
1. “People have different personalities and it’s OK that they are not like me. As an ENFP growing up with two ISTJ parents, life was hard – we had some serious conflicts. It wasn’t until we were introduced to Myers-Briggs that we stopped fighting and started to understand each other. Knowing each others types saved our relationship. We were able to laugh and say ‘That’s the ISTJ (or ENFP) in you.'”
2. “At a certain point in my life, I realized that the fear of rejection for a moment is never greater than the years of regret I will suffer if I do not try at all.”
3. “One of the greatest realizations of my life was that I need to see the world as it is, not as I wish it to be. Avoiding pain ultimately solves nothing and creates bigger problems.”
4. “It took me a while to fully appreciate my ability to see multiple possibilities and outcomes quickly. I never realized what a gift it was until I realized others really struggle thinking that way. It has changed how I communicate with other people.”
5. “I’m an incurable optimist, and it was a revelation to me to realize that some people just can’t easily see the upside of things. It’s genuinely a struggle for them, while for me it’s almost impossible not to see the positive in a situation. This realization has made it much easier to be more empathetic. Prior to this epiphany, if someone, say, lost a job, I’d helpfully point out all the good that could come out of it: better job, time to enjoy hobbies, freedom to change careers, etc. Now I realize many people quite simply can’t see the positive in some situations and they need to be heard and validated, not given a list of how great this terrible thing actually is.”
6. “Seeing only the good in people can really get you in trouble. The epiphany was that you can also see and recognize the bad in people, and really analyze it (not a comfortable thing) and it never detracts from all the wonderful good things that person has to offer. That there’s bad in all of us, and it doesn’t need to be swept under the rug. It’s just life.”
7. “One of the most important realisations I’ve come to is that I have to live life for myself. No one is going to live life according to my happiness so I have to do my best to do it for me.”
8. “I don’t have to be defined by my feelings. Being such an emotion-driven person can be great, but also detrimental if I allow that to become what controls me.”
9. “Throughout the course of my life I’ve learned that it is a gift to feel things so deeply and so passionately. Even if it makes my life really difficult sometimes, I wouldn’t change it for the world. As soon as I started to view my emotionality as a gift it became less of a struggle. Also, showing gratitude is the best pick-me-up for me when I am in one of my ‘I-want-to-do-everything-that’s-possible-in-the-whole-world-right-now’ moods.”
10. “You can feel something that is completely illogical and irrational, but that doesn’t make the feeling any less real or difficult.”
11. “I’ve always had an unhealthy tendency of absorbing other peoples’ energy–including their emotions, moods, opinions, values, and even habits. As a result, I’ve become extremely sensitive. I often tip-toe around others so I can hide and retreat inward to hang with my introverted feeling instead of embracing my extraverted intuition. Other times I become so angry that I explode because I take others’ negative energy personally. While my habit comes from good intentions, it has driven me to depression more often than not.
I finally learned to let the energy of others pass through me instead of stick and wreak havoc on my body and soul. In a week’s time, I learned how to envision a wind tunnel, instead of a spider web, over my heart and mind. Unlike a spider web, the wind tunnel allows energy of others to flow through me instead of being trapped and absorbed into my brain. I can now allow others to be human without allowing them hurt me. Allowing their energies to pass has helped me embrace my extraverted intuition, and I’m finally happy on a daily basis.”
12. “We are all infinitely connected. You should not tug on any part of the web without considering the tremor that will radiate through every string.”
13. “I do not need to be perfect for people to love me. It took me a burn out to figure it out.”
14. “You can’t always change the things around you. In our minds we dream of a perfect utopia – a world where bullying doesn’t exist, a world where emotional abuse exist only in novels and plays. The sad truth is that some people – narcissists, sociopaths, bullies – exist only to torment you. They don’t care about you, they don’t care about the world, they are born with the purpose of making themselves popular and famous – and wrecking us emotionally, mentally, and spiritually in the process. We become slaves to them, we become merely their toy. And sooner or later, it is the realization that you have to walk away, leave, and never return, and start a new life. And like a changed person, you don’t look back at the prison you’ve walked away from – you look forward, towards liberty that awaits you.”
15. “If I drive my car and focus on the rear view mirror, I get a really distorted view of where I am going. I will miss every little thing that comes my way, and will be lucky to arrive at my destination in one piece. I have to focus on the present if I am to go anywhere. What am I doing now, today, this minute that makes me feel alive?”
16. “The only thing that is permanent is impermanence. The only bad decision is not to make one. The only thing not to do is to not do anything. Failures are the road to success.”
17. “Life is about duality – you can’t have light without dark, good without bad, etc. We normally have two choices – either love or fear. Always chose love… unless a bear is about to maul you.”
18. “One of the most important things I’ve learned in my life is that I have to be my own hero. I think that Fi is prone to idealizing other people – hoping they’ll come along to shift our circumstances or change our lives for the better, but at the end of the day, we’re the only people capable of doing that. When I learned to be a go-getter and start pursuing what I wanted out of life (instead of waiting for it to come to me), my life transformed. Because I deliberately transformed it.”
19. “At a certain point in my life, I realized that just because you are considerate and very sensitive to other people’s feelings doesn’t mean it will be reciprocated. There will always be people who will hurt you without thinking twice but that’s no reason to stop being a decent human being.”
20. “One of the greatest realisations I’ve had is that in the end, I always have my own heart. No matter what happens to me I can continue to be loving and forgiving and happy. So long as I’m proud of who I am then everything will be okay. Also I learned to not be afraid of my chaos, emotion, and disorganization. It makes me, me.”
21. “30 years ago, an older friend of mine once took me aside and said ‘the secret to life is to never drink so much that people have a reason to make you stop drinking.‘ A specific example of moderation that I use as a mantra to this day.”
22. “One of the greatest epiphanies I ever came to is that happiness is not based on your circumstances–it’s a choice you can make no matter what you’re going through.”
23. “For a long time I was discouraged about my ‘childish’ or irresponsible attitude toward ‘adult’ tasks – taxes, cleaning, cooking, maintaining a schedule, etc. My dad said ‘You know, you’ll find it a lot easier to get excited about doing those things when they are truly YOURS – when you’re building a life all on your own and you are the arbiter of how your life goes.’ This was encouraging to me since I still live at home after college.”
24. “An important realization I’ve come to is that there is beauty in structure. For years I felt claustrophobia and the impulse to run when confronted with anything that felt constraining. In my late twenties I have taken a long hard look at my commitment issues and started to understand that there is a beautiful sense of freedom that comes with having boundaries and certain definites. I know now that if I don’t ground myself with certain routines, I actually feel too scattered to reach my potential. The same can be said for people. I used to want to be around people who were just as spontaneous and scatter brained as me, but now I crave people and relationships that ground me and where I can bring in the spontaneous energy, other wise there is no balance and things burn out fast.”
25. “A good thing I’ve learned to keep in mind is that worry is an option. I don’t have to be plagued by the things. I can choose to not worry and believe for good.”
26. “The only thing that matters is love. Not just being able to forgive, but also being able to let go. Loving not just others, but yourself first. Doing things you love with love, finding things you love in things you used to hate and doing things you hate with love. Giving your love to people that will grow it or hold it for you. Letting time melt away your love for those other ones. Balancing love, hate, and all the things in-between.”
27. “There was a time when I could never picture life after 30; I always thought that I would somehow overnight turn into a sad cat lady and it would all be downhill until the bitter end (I should give pep talks)…the funny thing is that being well past my mid thirties now, I have never felt better about myself, I am more self assured, I took risks like leaving a steady stable full time job to pursue a career that is just the opposite and even though I have almost none of the things I thought I would or should have by this age, a partner, a family, a stable job, a 10 year plan, tons of savings etc, I am happier and more content and confident than I ever thought I could be with all of the instability and the unknown. I wish I could go back and tell myself to just wait, because it gets so much better!”
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