ESTP Careers - 4 Work Styles Of The Personality Type | Podcast 0479

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  • Jess Messi
  • March 21, 2023 at 12:07 am

  Hi Antonia & Joel,
  ESTP here! Not sure if you remember me, but I was the young ESTP girl who was somewhat active in the PH community a few years back and had the awesome opportunity to meet you both in Toronto in 2018…before I surfed myself into the skies on the wave of coming-of-age years (as well as the pandemic) and fell off the face of the typology planet! I’ve been getting back into your podcasts lately and greatly appreciate your efforts, as they help a lot with self-discovery and personal development for a college-age adult like me :) Now, I’m about to unleash a last-few-months’-life-story here, so brace yourself for lots of reading if you’d like, haha!
  I resonated a bit with each of the Dominant and Harmonizing ESTP subtypes, but not too much. Unsurprisingly, I related most to the Creative one that’s prevalent in young people. What did surprise me was when Antonia was talking about “visiting different subtypes” at the end, and how you have to go through a non-opposite subtype to visit an opposite subtype – i.e. can’t directly go from Creative to Normalizing. This made me realize that this is what I’ve been (somewhat un)intentionally doing!
  I’ve been resonating with Creative/dopamine for a few years now (as a child I might’ve been more Harmonizing though, and I only got in touch with a dopamine-oriented lifestyle around 2020). Ever since I turned 18 and moved out, I’ve been very whimsical, adventurous, and varying levels of risk-taking – definitely mellowed out and kept myself safer since then though. However, in October/November of last year, I realized that I had never properly committed to (consistently dedicated myself to do) any one thing in my life, and – due to some extreme comeuppances – deduced that this was why I was falling flat on my face in achieving any major personal goals or maintaining healthy relationships. I carried a lot of self-disdain and didn’t know how to put it down, so I used this sort of self-hatred to motivate myself to be better: “You want to be better, yeah? You want to stop hurting the people you love so bad? Then freaking COMMIT to things – just START and DON’T STOP!!” (In case this sounds concerning: I’m doing a lot better now, and yes, I did talk to a mental health professional about this.) So I based my personal growth from that low point around commitment, dedication, consistency – all these serotonin-based things highly valued in society because they reliably build stability/expertise/relationships/careers/whatever. I climbed back up and thought I was doing great – and I was happy! I was treating people/myself better, more positive, doing mind-body practices, working out consistently for the first time in a long time, checking in with myself and others, consistently spending time developing skills I wanted to improve on, eating/sleeping right, etc. So I think that I was, without realizing, forcing myself through a change from Creative -> Normalizing (opposites).
  Fast forward! It’s March, it’s the darkest/cloudiest winter Southern Ontario has seen in >70 years, and I realize that I’m doing all these things graduated/graduate/older students advise you to do – take fewer courses to enjoy the undergrad experience, get involved with your community, work out, play intramural sports, etc. – but I’m unhappy. Yeah, I’m enjoying the things I learn in my classes and getting mostly awesome grades, and I’m VP of a student club I love partaking in, and I play soccer 3 times a week, dance salsa on Wednesdays, play nerf gun wars once every few weeks, see all my friends, write songs, am learning to code more complex programs outside of school (I don’t study anything related to coding)…but I’m miserable? And it took me all these months to recognize the reasons for my dissatisfaction: Reasons within my given class schedule, my self-imposed schedule, and within myself.
  I miss being spontaneous. I miss doing long bike rides to beautiful places for the sake of it on random afternoons, because I have afternoon classes until 5pm every day. I miss occasionally abandoning studying for tests in favour of coding a small program to help me solve unrelated problems, or spontaneously hitting up a friend for bubble tea, because my tight schedule doesn’t allow for this sort of spontaneity…whether it’s to do random work or to have fun. Hey Jess, you just got an idea to head somewhere in the next 10 minutes and stay/go explore for an hour or two? Welp, you just finished a class an hour ago but got another class in an hour so noooo can do there!
  Tl;dr (so sorry for the essay): I got to a place where I had to be so responsible and committed, it’s wearing me out and I no longer feel like I’m living authentically/living up to the best me I want to be.
  So I guess what I’m trying to say from my experience is…yeah, you guys are probably right! I didn’t know about these subtypes before I listened to this episode today, and I think I can probably “visit” the Normalizing subtype much more healthily if I go to Dominant or Harmonizing first. Maybe I ramped up too fast? I started slow (eating, sleeping, exercising regularly) but now it includes everything I’ve just mentioned. My class schedule also sucks this term – come on, winter afternoons are for going outside and seeing cool sights before it gets dark! Not for sitting in windowless classrooms! And screw awkward-length breaks between classes, really. Man, I would not love a 9-5 job!
  Maybe I’m just growing up, taking harder upper-year courses, and learning to be responsible/carry my own weight as we all have to be to an extent. Maybe I just miss being a kid. But I do think I go from 0 to 100 very fast whenever I do personal lifestyle changes, and then adjust down from 100 to a more balanced number. I can definitely get more into my Creative subtype expression without being totally irresponsible, and I can be responsible without committing to 69340183420 things (and refusing to put down even one).
  If you got this far, thanks for reading! Just wanted to connect & express my gratitude for your amazing episode/podcast :) I thought I’d share, because I think at least one person out there would be wondering: “What if someone did try to go from one opposite to the other?”