Advice for ENFP-T personality type
Table of Contents
So I feel like I cut my last video on ENFPs and neuroticism short a bit. So I wanted to film something else here with advice specifically for the ENFP-T personality type.
This is the test result you may have received if you essentially are higher in neuroticism. You’ll see the ENFP-T versus the ENFP-A, which is lower in neuroticism.
If you prefer reading, here is a video transcription made with Otter.ai
Advice for ENFP-T
So let me share a few tips for you on this if you are an ENFP who is higher in neuroticism. So one aspect of neuroticism is volatility – your emotions change a fair bit, and more than that, that when your mood changes, your behavior changes.
There are some people where, you know, they’re kind of the same no matter what doesn’t really matter on their mood. It’s just like they’re the same, and others of us who are high in volatility, which includes myself, our behavior can change more with our mood, let’s say.
ENFP-T mood swings and decision making
So one thing that’s really helpful with this is to really drill it into your head to train yourself that your mood will change and to notice that and not make decisions In that time. I have a video I filmed years ago, I think it’s called why I don’t make decisions when I’m hungover and it’s essentially on this topic. It’s that when I’m feeling the time to talk about being hungover, but it could be when you’re feeling really sad, if you’re really frustrated, if you’re sick, whatever it is, if you’re aware that you’re not 100% yourself right now, right? When you’re just check in with yourself and you realize, like, I’m not thinking my best – don’t make big decisions.
Because in these times, it’s really easy to have your thoughts spiral to be thinking one bad thing than another bad thing, and you just go down and down and down and that happens if you let it happen. So in this video, what I share, and I’ll share the same thing here is it’s not that I don’t even make decisions, I don’t actually allow myself to start contemplating the decisions. Because I know if I let my mind go in that direction, it will just go down and down and down and if you’re not thinking right, you can convince yourself of whatever…
So when I am in a headspace that I know is not my best headspace, I will just cut off thoughts like if I’m starting to think about business strategy or relationships with people or whatever else, I will just say to myself, dude, you’re not in the right headspace for this, go play a computer game, go for a run, watch a movie, you know, go have a sauna, whatever it is, like go do something else. Because thinking about this, you know, from the past won’t get you anywhere.
Yes, it takes a little bit of mental control to actually follow through on that. But it’s not that hard to convince yourself to go play a video game or like call up your mom or you know, hang out with friends or go for a walk, like just go do something else, but have those thoughts basically.
If you’re alone, and you’re you’re having all these thoughts within go spend time with a friend, right, you’ll be it totally, especially as an ENFP it totally changes your, your thought dynamic when you’re with someone else. So do something like that.
You know, if you’re a subscriber to the channel that I’m all about the life design approach, which is to design your life around when what you want, but also your personality, who you are and so obviously, I cannot make a video without mentioning that is don’t go take a job, for instance, or build the type of business that is going to require you to be totally consistent, like a stock-trader, not for you, I’m sorry, it’s not going to be the right thing. Kindergarten teacher – probably not the best thing. If you’re high in volatility, like by 2 pm, when you’re completely out of any sort of self-discipline and filtering, and you’re frustrated, you’re going to cause some serious trauma for those kids, okay.
So don’t pick a profession where you need to be really stable, and that volatility will have a really negative impact and I’m completely serious about this. Like if you know your volatile person don’t get into something where volatility is going to be really harmful, it’s going to be a complete disaster.
ENFP-T and withdrawal
Now another aspect of neuroticism is something called withdrawal, which is basically anxiety about doing something new. So people who are very low in withdrawal are totally cool jumping into the unknown. They don’t really worry about future things too much and I’ll give you a good example. (I am actually low in withdrawal.) So when I take the Big Five, I score moderately low, like 35 to 40 percentile on neuroticism, because I score quite high on volatility and extremely low on withdrawal. So future wise, I jumped into things.
Part of having a low withdrawal for me, and I think it’s probably got lower with time is the more you jump into the unknown, the more you realize like I can handle that that works out and the last six months we’ve been in a new country. We’ve been on lockdown with the virus. It’s all worked out well. This house we’ve moved into is like a palace. We have a sauna jacuzzi with the banana tree right behind you on the camera and literally moved in like four hours before the lockdown started and we weren’t allowed to leave your house for six weeks or something like that.
So Spain had the strictest lockdown and so going through these things, here’s my point, and this is actually the advice if you score moderate or high in withdrawal, is the more you go into the unknown, the more comfortable you become with it. So the first times like when I went to move to Costa Rica in 2012, I was definitely scared. When I’ve started my own businesses a bunch of times that earlier times I was excited, of course, but I was more scared than I am now if I do something new and it’s because you build your confidence, your belief in jumping into the unknown, just based on evidence. So if you are moderate or high in withdrawal, what I would suggest doing is baby steps, but consistent baby steps into the unknown and occasionally, like big boy steps, you know, push yourself a little bit more on it. So it’s not that it always has to be baby steps.
I know some of my biggest life changes were like, going from here to here in one decision. It wasn’t gradual. But again, I scored lower in withdrawals. So that’s a bit easier for me to do. If you’ve been thinking, let’s say about making a big change in your life for years, and you just can’t do it and you get overwhelmed and you never do it, then probably the baby step approach is better for you.
Advice for ENFP-T Personality type – Explore the Unknown
The other thing is if there’s unknown, explore that unknown, so if you’re terrified about becoming an entrepreneur, (I’m gonna drop some self-promotion here, full warning) if you’re terrified about becoming an entrepreneur, but you really want it but there’s this big divide now because no one you know was an entrepreneur, there’s a big leap. So that’s going to be terrifying because this new life, working for yourself is such an unknown.
There are some weird guys on the internet telling you about “look at my Lamborghini” and you could have this too and whatever. But aside from that, it’s kind of an unknown to you, right? So take some baby steps get involved with people who are entrepreneurs in one way or another, maybe go volunteer, go be an intern or join something.
ENFP Unleashed is the perfect opportunity to step up
I have this program, for instance, ENFP Unleashed and it is a training program for ENFPs, it is not about working for yourself, but a good percentage of the members do work for themselves, including myself and within this community, we have lots of group coaching calls together and interaction and getting to know each other. So if you don’t know anyone who works for themselves, it’s like a baby step where you’re like: “Oh, this Jil person, she seems to work for herself and it doesn’t seem too scared. She’s not crying every time we talk.” or you’ll say: “This Dan guy seems pretty normal. When we do these live calls. This Chris person, he seems pretty normal. Jenny over here, she has her own business too. Carly seems cool. She’s not freaked out all the time. She has her own business…”, and then pretty soon that unknown, it’s not that unknown anymore to you. it’s like you’re not doing it yet. But you know, a bunch of people who do, and you’re like: “Oh, they’re not really any smarter, or any different than me or whatever… Maybe it’s not that scary, right?” You can apply this to anything. But open yourself up basically, to the unknown more, in whatever way will make it less terrifying for you.
So what you’re doing there, you’re kind of doing like a two punch approach to things. On one hand, by taking baby steps entering the unknown, you build your confidence in being able to handle the unknown, so now you’re able to handle more and more unknown because you’ve done it in the past. You look back, you’re like, Hey, I did it before I can do it in the future and then the unknown, you make it less unknown.
So before there was this huge divide, and then you build your confidence by doing baby steps, so you’re like here, and then you make this unknown, less scary by meeting people who’ve been in that unknown or researching or whatever and now suddenly, you bring those two together and that’s how you can then make a big leap, essentially, but it doesn’t feel like as big of a leap because you’ve turned the light on on the unknown and you’re like: “Oh, it’s not actually too scary and actually, I’m braver than I thought I was. Cool.”, and by the way, I should mention that if you are an ENFP, and you found this helpful, you can go deeper into some of my training at DATW.com/BIG5ENFP
One last tip on neuroticism for all of my ENFP-T folks out there
But before we go, I wanted to share one more tip for ENFP-T type around neuroticism and this I think is especially true with volatility, but I think it probably helps with withdrawal as well. So the advice I shared so far was based on you having a fixed level of neuroticism, basically, and what are the things that you can do to improve. Well, I mentioned in an earlier video that I think neuroticism is one of the traits that actually can vary a fair bit and I think it’s tied to, okay, I’ll say mental health, but I more mean like brain health, like being at peak function.
So I have found with myself when I am eating really well, and for me, that is low carb, and not eating junk food and all that (That goes without saying), but the low carb as well being quite strict with that, lots of healthy oils, high fat, that’s just for me, my brain tends to work a lot better on that and when I’m exercising a lot, especially cardio exercise, when I do those things, my volatility, the aspect of neuroticism goes way down. I am much more stable with my mood, I deal with adversity a lot better.
If I were to take the test based on the times when I am exercising every day and eating really well I think my volatility score would actually be quite low. If I look at my childhood, I was very volatile and I still can be to some extent, but when I’m taking care of my brain and body on that, and even things like inputs, I’ve talked about this on the channel lots before, like more focused on uplifting videos, movies, people and not watching the news and other garbage out there, that I tend to be a lot less volatile, and definitely dealing with setbacks and if I look over the past year or so when I deal with a setback, now I am much better at just analyzing the situation, and figuring out what I need to do next and moving forward with it and some of that comes from experience. Some of it comes from built up confidence I mentioned earlier in this video about the more you deal with tough situations, the more they don’t faze you anymore, for sure. But I think a lot of it is brain health and a lot of that comes down to actually exercise.
So if you are someone who is high in neuroticism, high in volatility, building up your cardiovascular system, exercising more getting outside into nature, that is going to make a massive, long term difference. So highly, highly recommend that.
