INTJ Careers - 4 Work Styles Of The Personality Type | Podcast 0489

11 comments

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  • Jack Mast
  • May 29, 2023 at 5:19 pm

  I recently discovered your podcast on YouTube and iTunes, and have enjoyed every episode I have listened to, both recent and from the vault. I have a lot of discord in my mind about exactly who I am and how my brain works. I often feel as if there are several people inside my head, a sort of Jekyl and Hyde contending for my attention, though neither is as disturbed as Stevenson’s creation. I thought I would describe some of the internal tension in the hopes that you could provide some clarity. To do so I will need to go back a few yeaars. For quite literally all of my childhood, I was determined to be a bush pilot. This was beyond a childhood fascination: it was, I believe, a spiritual calling and destiny. Early on, my ideas and plans were fairly unrealistic; in my upper teens, having talked with pilots and heard about the industry, I made more calculated plans in typical INTJ fashion. I believe I may have been a creative subtype, or something similar. Much of what I planned included having side jobs and hobbies that I could indulge myself in while flying and waiting for flights. All of this came to a crashing halt shortly after turning 18 when I suffered a traumatic brain injury, resulting in a complete loss of vision, though my mental faculties and personality remarkably experienced little to no change. Obviously, my career path had to change. In the three years since, my plans for the future have gone through several fluctuations. I am now a rising sophomore in the field of Biblical Studies, working toward a Bachelor of Arts. After that, I hope to continue toward a doctoral degree in the same field. I am fairly firmly entrenched in Humanities, and I hope to stay there as a professor. however, and this is where Hyde comes in, I also feel a tension with another part of me that loves STEM and hard science, particularly mathematics and finance. This is the more outward focus of whatever subtype I fall into. Internally, the constant tension is between the harmonizing philosopher, typology nerd, and lecturer and the creative financial analyst financing a plethora of hobbies and side hustles, the normalizing mathematician, I think, and the dominant financier, CEO, products manager, et cetera working to be the top of whatever field I am in. One problem accentuating this tension is that those other sides of my brain are limited more severly by my blindness. The harmonizing side seems the one that will accommodate my disabilities and utilize my abilities most, but I often feel as if I am sacrificing another part of me to following that path. I am not sure if all of this properly expresses the discordance I feel. I sometimes feel almost stifled by not being able to fully express the more STEM side of my brain, except through mental math, or mathemagic. This is one reason that I hope to minor in business and leave that door open, but I also do not think that will quite satisfy me. In listening to this podcast, I resonated with the dominant type somewhat, the creative a lot more—until you started talking about careers—the mornalizing fairly well, and the harmonizing a lot. You also said that the harmonizing type normally comes with age, having experienced more of life. My 21 complete years have not lent much age or actual experience, though I feel like I have lived several lifetimes in my head while undergoing rehab after my TBI. I hope this makes sense. Does this discord make sense? Does it fit into your broader understanding of type and personality? Do you have any words that could make more sense of this for me? One other comment: at times my dominant side urges me to specialize and become a top scholar in my field, a name known wherever Biblical Studies are taught. At other times, my more creative side focuses on being skilled at all areas and none singly. My normalizing side, I think, is drawn to just continuing in the set lines without making waves. Then my harmonizing side throws its metaphorical hands up and says hang it all! I am young; I do not need to make a decision, and I can specialize in many areas without choosing one to dominate in. Any advice for a young and confused INTJ?